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COLLECTED  E.SSAYS 

OF 
EDMUND  GOSSE 


VOL.   IV 

FRENCH  PROFILES 


BY  THE  SyJME  AUTHOR 
'Uniform  with  this  Volume 

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY  STUDIES 
GOSSIP  IN  A  LIBRARY 
CRITICAL  KIT-KATS 
PORTRAITS  AND  SKETCHES 

NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


FRENCH  PROFILES 


BY 

EDMUND   GOSSE,  C.B. 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1914 


f*rinUd  in  Ent^an^ 


IJBKAKY 

LMVERSn  V  OV  <J AUFORxMA 
SAxMA  UAKBAKA 


TO 
MY  FRIEND 

SIR  ALFRED   BATEMAN,  K.C.M.G. 

IN   MEMORY  OF 

THE    TALKS     OF     MANY    YEARS 

I  AFFECTIONATELY  INSCRIBE 

THESE  STUDIES 


PREFACE 

It  is  characteristic  of  native  criticism  that  it  con- 
templates, or  should  contemplate,  the  products  of 
native  literature  from  the  front ;  that  it  looks  at  them, 
in  other  words,  from  a  direct  and  complete  point  of 
view.  Foreign  criticism  must  not  pretend  to  do  this; 
unless  it  is  satisfied  to  be  a  mere  echo  or  repetition,  its 
point  of  view  must  be  incomplete  and  indirect,  must  be 
that  of  one  who  paints  a  face  in  profile.  In  preparing 
the  following  sideviews  of  some  curious  figures  in  modem 
French  literature,  I  have  attempted  to  keep  two  aims 
prominently  before  me.  I  have  tried  to  preserve  that 
attitude  of  sympathy,  of  general  comprehension,  for 
the  lack  of  which  some  English  criticism  of  foreign 
authors  has  been  valueless,  because  proceeding  from  a 
point  so  far  out  of  focus  as  to  make  its  whole  presenta- 
tion false;  and  yet  I  have  remembered  that  it  is  a 
foreigner  who  takes  the  portrait,  and  that  he  takes  it 
for  a  foreign  audience,  and  not  for  a  native  one. 

What  I  have  sought  in  every  case  to  do  is  to  give  an 
impression  of  the  figure  before  me  which  shall  be  in 
general  harmony  \vith  the  tradition  of  French  criticism, 
but  at  the  same  time  to  preserve  that  independence 
which  is  the  right  of  a  foreign  observer,  and  to  illustrate 
the  pecuharities  of  my  subject  by  references  to  Enghsh 
poetry  and  prose. 

It  should  not  be  difficult  to  carry  out  this  scheme 
of  portraiture  in  the  case  of  authors  whose  work  is 


Vlll 


Preface 


finished.  But  the  study  of  contemporary  writers,  also, 
is  of  great  interest,  and  must  not  be  neglected,  although 
its  results  are  incomplete.  Several  of  the  authors  who 
are  treated  here  are  still  alive,  and  some  are  younger 
than  myself.  It  is  highly  probable  that  all  of  these 
will,  in  the  development  of  their  genius,  make  some  new 
advance  which  may  render  obsolete  what  the  most  care- 
ful criticism  has  said  about  them  up  to  the  present  time. 
In  these  living  cases,  therefore,  it  seems  more  helpful 
to  consider  certain  books — to  take  snapshots,  as  it 
were,  at  the  authors  in  the  course  of  their  progress — 
than  to  attempt  a  summing-up  of  what  is  still  fortunately 
undefined.  Of  the  art  with  which  this  can  be  done, 
and  the  permanent  value  of  that  art,  the  French  criticism 
of  our  generation  has  given  admirable  proof. 

The  last  chapter  in  this  book  is  not  in  any  sense  a 
profile,  but  the  writer  trusts  that  he  will  be  forgiven 
for  introducing  it  here.  Last  winter  he  had  the  honour 
of  being  invited  to  Paris  to  deliver  an  address  before 
the  Socidte  des  Conferences.  The  Committee  of  that 
Society,  consisting  of  MM,  Ferdinand  Brunetifere, 
fidouard  Rod  and  Gaston  Deschamps,  in  proposing  the 
subject  of  the  address,  asked  that  it  should  be  delivered 
in  English,  In  an  admirable  French  translation,  made 
by  my  accompUshed  friend,  M.  Henry  D.  Davray,  it 
was  afterwards  published  in  the  Mercure  de  France  and 
then  as  a  separate  brochure,  but  the  English  text  is 
now  printed  for  the  first  time. 

Mr.  James  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  has  been  so  kind  as 
to  read  the  proofs  of  this  volume,  and  I  am  indebted 
to  his  rare  acquaintance  with  Continental  literature  for 
many  valuable  corrections  and  suggestions.  My  thanks 
are  due  to  the  proprietors  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  the 
Contemporary  Review,  the  International  Quarterly  Review, 


Preface  ix 

the  Saturday  Review  and  the  Daily  Chronicle,  for  per- 
mission to  reprint  what  originally  appeared  in  their 
pages.  I  regret  that  in  one  other  case,  that  of  the 
useful  and  unique  European  review,  Cosmopolis,  there 
is  no  one  left  who  can  receive  this  acknowledgment. 

E.  G. 

Argkl£s-Gazost, 

September  igo4. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  NEW  EDITION 

Called  upon  after  eightyears  to  revise  a  newimpression 
of  this  volume,  I  feel,  with  regard  to  parts  of  it,  the 
inconvenience  of  studying  the  characteristics  of  a  living 
organism.  Leighton,  I  remember,  once  told  me  of  the 
heartbreaking  anxiety  which  pursued  him  while  making 
a  very  elaborate  pencil-study  of  a  lemon-tree.  Every 
morning  some  shoot  had  pushed  in  front  of  another, 
some  bud  had  swelled  or  had  burst  in  blossom,  growths 
in  every  portion  of  the  tree  conspired  to  defeat  the 
designer.  In  literature  those  who  have  published 
studies  of  the  living — greater  men  than  I,  such  as 
M.  Anatole  France  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre — have 
bewailed  the  same  phenomenon.  I  have,  therefore,  not 
attempted  to  follow  the  later  growth  or  to  record  the 
unexpected  blossomings  of  those  of  my  themes  who  are 
still  happily  alive  and  active.  I  have  confined  myself 
to  a  careful  revision  of  matters  of  fact  and  to  a  few 
necessary  interpolations.  But  I  have  added  a  chapter, 
on  the  same  scale,  about  M.  Maurice  Barres,  and  I  have 
greatly  enlarged,  or  practically  re-written,  the  sketch 
of  Stdphane  Mallarme. 

E.  G. 

May  jgij. 


CONTENTS 


PACK 


PREFACE  vii 

ALFRED   DE   VIGNY  i 

MADEMOISELLE   AISSE  33 

A  NUN'S   LOVE  LETTERS  63 

BARBEY   D'AUREVILLY  87 

ALPHONSE    DAUDET  103 

THE   SHORT   STORIES   OF   ZOLA  125 

FERDINAND   FABRE  149 

A   FIRST   SIGHT   OF   VERLAINE  177 

THE   IRONY   OF   M.   ANATOLE    FRANCE        185 

PIERRE    LOTI  199 

SOME     RECENT     BOOKS     OF     M.      PAUL 

BOURGET  233 

M.   RENE   BAZIN  259 

M.   MAURICE   BARRES  285 

M.    HENRI    DE    RfiGNIER  297 


XIU 


xiv  Contents 


PACE 


FOUR    POETS:— 

STfiPHANE   MALLARMfi  313 

M.   EMILE   VERHAEREN  324 

ALBERT   SAMAIN  329 

M.  PAUL   FORT  334 

THE     INFLUENCE     OF     FRANCE  UPON 

ENGLISH    POETRY  339 

APPENDIX:  MALLARM^  AND  SYMBOLISM     371 

INDEX  375 


ALFRED   DE   VIGNY 


< 


ALFRED    DE    VIGNY 

The  reputation  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  has  endured  extra- 
ordinary vicissitudes  in  France.  After  having  taken 
his  place  as  the  precursor  of  French  romantic  poetry 
and  as  one  of  the  most  admired  of  its  proficients,  he 
withdrew  from  among  his  noisier  and  more  copious 
contemporaries  into  that  "  ivory  tower "  of  reverie 
which  is  the  one  commonplace  of  criticism  regarding 
him.  He  died  in  as  deep  a  retirement  as  if  his  body 
had  lain  in  the  shepherd's  hut  on  wheels  upon  the  open 
moorland,  which  he  took  as  the  symbol  of  his  isolation. 
He  had  long  been  neglected,  he  was  almost  forgotten, 
when  the  publication  of  his  posthumous  poems — a 
handful  of  unfiawed  amethysts  and  sapphires — revived 
his  fame  among  the  enlightened.  But  the  Second 
Empire  was  a  period  deeply  unfavourable  to  such 
contemplation  as  the  writings  of  Vigny  demand.  He 
sank  a  second  time  into  semi-oblivion;  he  became  a 
curiosity  of  criticism,  a  hunting-ground  for  anthology- 
makers.  Within  the  last  ten  years,  however,  a  marked 
revolution  of  taste  has  occurred  in  France.  The  supre- 
macy of  Victor  Hugo  has  been,  if  not  questioned,  since 
it  is  above  serious  attack,  at  least  mitigated.  Other 
poets  have  recovered  from  their  obscurity;  Lamartine, 
who  had  been  quenched,  shines  like  a  lamp  relighted; 
and,  above  all,  the  pure  and  brilliant  and  profoundly 
original  genius  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  now  takes,  for  the 
first  time,  its  proper  place  as  one  of  the  main  illuminating 

3 


French   Profiles 


forces  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  was  not  until 
about  ninety  years  after  this  poet's  birth  that  it  became 
clearly  recognised  that  he  is  one  of  the  most  important 
of  all  the  great  poets  of  France. 

The  revival  of  admiration  for  Vigny  has  not  yet 
spread  to  England,  where  he  is  perhaps  less  known 
than  any  other  French  writer  of  the  first  class.  This 
is  the  more  to  be  regretted  because  he  did  not,  in  the 
brief  day  of  his  early  glory,  contrive  to  attract  many 
hearers  outside  his  own  country.  It  is  not  merely 
regrettable,  moreover,  it  is  curiously  unjust,  because 
Vigny  is  of  all  the  great  French  poets  the  one  who  has 
assimilated  most  of  the  English  spirit,  and  has  been 
influenced  most  by  EngUsh  poetry.  Andre  Chenier 
read  Pope  and  Thomson  and  the  Faerie  Queen,  but  he 
detested  the  Anglo-Saxon  spirit.  Alfred  de  Vigny,  on 
the  other  hand,  delighted  in  it ;  he  was  a  convinced 
Anglophil,  and  the  writers  whom  he  resembles,  in  his 
sublime  isolation  from  the  tradition  of  liis  own  country, 
are  Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  Matthew  Arnold  and 
Leopardi.  He  has  much  of  the  spirit  of  Dante  and  of 
the  attitude  of  Milton.  Wholly  independent  as  he  is, 
one  of  the  most  unattached  of  writers,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  feel  in  him  a  certain  Anglo-ItaUan  gravity  and 
intensity,  a  certain  reserve  and  resignation  in  the  face 
of  human  suffering,  which  distinguish  him  from  all  other 
French  writers  of  eminence.  It  is  not  from  any  of 
Alfred  de  Vigny's  great  contemporaries  that  life  would 
have  extracted  that  last  cry  in  the  desert : — 

"  Seul  le  silence  est  grand  :  tout  le  reste  est  faiblesse," 

nor  should  we  look  to  them  for  the  ambiguous  device 
"  Parfaite  illusion — R^ahte  parfaite."  The  other  poets 
of  France  have  been  picturesque,  abundant,  gregarious. 


Alfred  de  Vigny  5 

vehement;  Alfred  de  Vigny  was  not  of  their  class,  but 
we  can  easily  conceive  him  among  those  who,  in  the 
Cumberland  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  were  murmuring 
by  the  running  brooks  a  music  sweeter  than  their 
own. 

One  word  of  warning  may  not  be  out  of  place.  If 
Alfred  de  Vigny  was  known  to  Enghsh  readers  of  a 
past  generation  it  was  mainly  through  a  brilliant  study 
by  Sainte-Beuve  in  his  Nouveaux  Lundis.  This  was 
composed  very  shortly  after  the  death  of  Vigny,  and, 
in  spite  of  its  excessive  critical  cleverness,  it  deserves 
very  little  commendation.  Sainte-Beuve,  who  had  been 
more  or  less  intimate  with  Vigny  forty  years  before, 
had  formed  a  strange  jealousy  of  him,  and  in  this  essay 
his  perfidy  runs  riot.  It  is  Sainte-Beuve  who  calls  the 
poet  of  Les  Destinees  a  "  beautiful  angel  who  had  been 
drinking  vinegar,"  and  the  modern  reader  needs  a 
strong  caution  against  the  malice  and  raillery  of  the 
quondam  friend  who  was  so  patient  and  who  forgot 
nothing. 


An  image  of  the  youthful  Alfred  de  Vigny  is  preserved 
for  us  in  the  charming  portrait  of  the  Carnavalet  Museum. 
Here  he  smiles  at  us  out  of  gentle  blue  eyes,  and  under 
copious  yellow  curls,  candid,  dreamy,  almost  childlike 
in  his  magnificent  scarlet  and  gold  uniform  of  the  King's 
Musketeers.  This  portrait  was  painted  in  1815,  when 
the  subject  of  it  was  just  eighteen,  yet  had  already 
served  in  the  army  for  a  year.  Alfred  de  Vigny  was 
born  at  Loches,  on  March  27,  1797.  Aristocrats  and  of 
families  wholly  military,  his  father  and  mother  had  been 
thrown  into  prison  during  the  Terror,  had  escaped  with 


French   Profiles 


their  lives,  and  had  concealed  themselves  after  Thermidor, 
in  the  romantic  httle  town  of  the  Touraine.  The  child- 
hood of  the  poet  was  not  particularly  interesting ;  what 
is  known  about  it  is  recorded  in  M.  Seche's  recent 
volume  ^  and  elsewhere.  But  there  effervesced  in  his 
young  soul  a  burning  ambition  for  arms,  and  before  he 
was  seventeen,  he  contrived  to  leave  school  and  enter 
a  squadron  of  the  Gendarmes  Rouges.  He  was  full  of 
military  pride  in  his  early  life,  and  until  his  illusions 
overcame  him  he  hardly  knew  whether  to  be  more  vain 
of  the  laurel  or  of  the  sword.     He  says : — 

"  J'ai  mis  sur  le  cimier  dore  du  gentilhomme 
Une  plume  de  fer  qui  n'est  pas  sans  beaute ; 
J'ai  fait  illustre  un  nom  qu'on  m'a  transmis  sans  gloire," 

for  he  knew  that  the  deeds  of  that  "  petite  noblesse  " 
from  which  he  sprang  were  excellent,  but  not  magnificent. 
No  one  seems  to  have  discovered  under  what  auspices 
he  began  to  write  verses.  There  appear  in  his  works 
two  idyls.  La  Dryade  and  Symetha,  which  are  marked 
as  "  written  in  1815."  Sainte-Beuve,  with  curious 
coarseness,  after  Vigny's  death,  accused  him  in  so  many 
terms  of  having  antedated  these  pieces  by  five  years  in 
order  to  escape  the  reproach  of  having  imitated  Andre 
Ch^nier,  whose  poems  were  first  collected  posthumously 
in  1819.  Such  a  charge  is  contrary  to  everything  we 
know  of  the  upright  and  chivalrous  character  of  Vigny. 
That  the  influence  of  Chenier  is  strong  on  these  verses 
is  unquestionable.  But  Sainte-Beuve  should  not  have 
forgotten  that  the  eclogues  of  Chenier  were  quoted  by 
Chateaubriand  in  a  note  to  the  Genie  du  Christianisme 
in  1802,  and  that  this  was  quite  enough  to  start  the 

*  Lton  S6ch6,  Alfred  de  Vigny  et  son  Temps,  Paris,  Fdlix  Juven, 
1902. 


Alfred  de  Vigny 


youthful  talent  of  Vigny.  From  this  time  forth,  no 
attack  can  be  made  on  the  originality  of  the  poet,  so 
far  as  all  French  influences  are  concerned.  The  next 
piece  of  his  which  we  possess.  La  Dante  Romaine,  is 
dated  1817 ;  this  and  Le  Bal,  of  1818,  show  the  attraction 
which  Byron  had  for  him.  In  these  verses  the  romantic 
school  of  French  poetry  made  its  earliest  appeal  to  the 
pubhc,  and  in  1819  Alfred  de  Vigny's  friendship  with 
the  youthful  Victor  Hugo  began. 

It  was  in  1822  that  a  little  volume  of  the  highest 
historical  importance  was  issued,  without  the  name  of 
its  author,  and  under  the  modest  title  of  Poetnes.  It 
was  divided  into  three  parts,  Antiques,  Judaiques,  and 
Modernes,  and  the  second  of  these  sections  contained 
one  poem  which  can  still  be  read  with  undiluted  pleasure. 
This  is  the  exquisite  lyrical  narrative  entitled  La  Fille 
de  Jephte,  which  had  been  composed  in  1820.  To 
realise  what  were  the  merits  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  as  a 
precursor,  we  have  but  to  compare  this  faultless  BibUcal 
elegy  with  anything  of  the  kind  written  up  to  that 
date  by  a  French  poet,  even  though  his  name  was 
Hugo. 

Meanwhile  the  Ufe  of  Vigny  was  a  picturesque  and 
melancholy  one.  A  certain  impression  of  its  features 
may  be  gathered,  incidentally,  from  the  pages  of  the 
Grandeur  et  Servitude  Militaires,  although  that  was 
written  long  afterwards.  He  was  a  soldier  from  his 
seventeenth  to  his  thirtieth  year,  and  many  of  his  best 
poems  were  written  by  lamplight,  in  the  corner  of  a 
tent,  as  the  young  lieutenant  lay  on  his  elbow,  waiting 
for  the  tuck  of  drum.  He  was  long  in  garrison  with 
the  Royal  Foot  Guards  at  Vincennes,  and  thence  he 
could  slip  in  to  Paris,  meet  the  other  budding  poets  at 
the  rooms  of  Nodier,   and  recite  verses  with  Emile 


8  French   Profiles 

Deschamps  and  Victor  Hugo.  But  in  1823  he  was 
definitely  torn  from  Paris.  The  vSpanish  War  took  his 
regiment  to  the  Pyrenean  frontier  and  it  was  while  in 
camp,  close  to  Roncevaux  and  Fuentarrabia,  that  he 
seems  to  have  heard,  one  knows  not  how,  of  the  newly 
discovered  wonders  of  the  Chanson  de  Roland,  which  was 
still  unknown  save  to  a  few  Enghsh  scholars ;  the  result 
was  that  he  wrote  that  enchanting  poem,  Le  Cor.  If 
the  student  is  challenged,  as  he  sometimes  is,  to  name 
a  lyric  in  the  French  language  which  has  the  irresistible 
magic  and  melody  of  the  best  pieces  of  Coleridge  or 
Keats,  that  fairy  music  which  is  the  pecuUar  birthright 
of  England,  he  cannot  do  better  than  to  quote,  almost 
at  random,  from  Le  Cor : — 

"  Sur  Ic  plus  haut  des  monts  s'arretent  les  chevaux ; 
L'ecume  le  blanchit;  sous  leurs  pieds,  Roncevaux 
Des  feux  mourants  du  jour  k  peine  se  colore. 
A  I'horizon  lointain  fuit  I'etendard  du  More. 

'  Turpin,  n'as-tu  rien  vu  dans  le  fond  du  torrent  ?  ' 
'  J'y  vols  deux  chevaliers;  I'un  mort,  I'autre  expirant. 
Tous  deux  sont  ecrases  sous  une  roche  noire ; 
Le  plus  fort,  dans  sa  main,  eleve  un  Cor  d'i voire. 
Son  5.me  en  s'exhalant  nous  appela  deux  fois.' 

Dieu  !  que  le  son  du  Cor  est  triste  au  fond  des  bois." 

Begun  at  Roncevaux  in  1823,  Le  Cor  was  finished  at 
Pau  in  1825.  At  the  former  date,  Alfred  de  Vigny 
was  slightly  in  love  with  the  fascinating  Delphine  Gay, 
and  some  verses,  recently  given  to  the  world,  lead  to 
the  belief  that  he  failed  to  propose  to  her  because  she 
"  laughed  too  loudly."  Already  the  melancholy  and 
distinguished  sobriety  of  manner  which  was  to  be  the 
mark  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  had  begun  to  settle  upon  him. 
Already  he  shrank  from  noise,  from  levity,  from  hollow 
and  reverberating  enthusiasm.     His  regiment  was  sent 


Alfred  de  Vigny 


to  Strasburg  and  he  became  a  captain.  Returning  to 
the  Pyrenees,  he  wrote  Le  Deluge  and  Dolorida  ;  in  the 
Vosges  he  composed  the  first  draft  of  iloa,  which  he 
called  Satan.  In  the  second  edition  of  his  Poemes, 
there  were  included  a  number  of  pieces  vastly  superior 
to  those  previously  published,  and  Alfred  de  Vigny 
boldly  claimed  for  himself  that  distinction  as  a  pre- 
cursor, which  was  long  denied  to  him,  and  which  is 
now  again  universally  conceded.  He  wrote  that  "  the 
only  merit  of  these  poems," — it  was  not  their  only  or 
their  greatest  merit,  but  it  was  a  distinction, — "  c'est 
d'avoir  devance  en  France  toutes  celles  de  ce  genre." 
That  was  absolutely  true. 

When  we  reflect  that  the  earhest  poems  of  Victor 
Hugo  which  display  his  characteristic  talent,  such  as 
Le  Sylphe  and  La  Grand'mere,  belong  to  1823,  the 
originality  of  Mo'ise,  which  was  written  in  1822,  is 
extraordinary.  In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  pubhshed 
since,  this  poem  may  still  be  read  with  complete  plea- 
sure; there  are  few  narratives  in  the  French  language 
more  distinguished,  more  uplifted.  Moses  stands  at 
sunset  on  the  brow  of  Nebo;  the  land  of  Canaan  lies 
spread  at  his  feet.  He  gazes  at  it  with  longing  and 
despair,  and  then  he  turns  to  climb  the  mountain. 
Amid  the  hymns  of  Israel  he  ascends  into  the  clouds, 
and  in  the  luminous  obscurity  he  speaks  with  God. 
In  a  majestic  soUloquy  he  expatiates  on  the  illusions 
of  his  solitary  greatness,  and  on  the  disappointment  of 
his  finding  his  own  life  more  isolated  and  more  arid 
the  vaster  his  destinies  become.  The  angels,  themselves, 
envy  his  position  : — 

"  Vos  anges  sont  jaloux  et  m'admirent  entre  eux, 
Et  cependant.  Seigneur,  je  ne  suis  pas  heureux; 
Vous  m'avez  fait  vieillir  puissant  et  solitaire, 
Laisscz-moi  m'endormir  du  sommeil  de  la  terre." 


lo  French  Profiles 

Here  we  have  at  length  the  master  accent  of  Alfred  de 
Vigny,  that  which  was  to  be  the  central  note  of  his 
poetry,  a  conception  of  the  sublimity  of  man,  who, 
having  tasted  of  the  water  of  life,  sinks  back  "  dizzy, 
lost,  yet  unbewailing."  Nothing  could  be  more  poignant 
than  the  melodious  reverie  of  Moses : — 

"  J'ai  vu  I'amour  s'eteindre  et  Tamitie  tarir; 
Les  vierges  se  voilaient  et  craignaient  de  mourir. 
M'enveloppant  alors  de  la  colonne  noire, 
J'ai  marche  devant  tous,  triste  et  seul  dans  ma  gloire, 
Et  j'ai  dit  dans  mon  coeur  :  '  Que  vouloir  a  present  ?  ' 
Pour  dormir  sur  un  sein  mon  front  est  trop  pesant, 
Ma  main  laisse  I'effroi  sur  la  main  qu'elle  touche, 
L'orage  est  dans  ma  voix,  I'eclair  est  sur  ma  bouche ; 
Aussi,  loin  de  m'aimer,  voila  qu'ils  tremblent  tous, 
Et,  quand  j'ouvre  les  bras,  on  tombe  a  mes  genoux. 
O  Seigneur  !  j'ai  vecu  puissant  et  solitaire, 
Laissez-moi  m'endormir  du  sommeil  de  la  terre  !  " 

On  the  morning  when  these  enchanting  verses  were 
composed,  poetry  was  full-grown  again  in  France, 
reborn  after  the  long  burial  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  processes  of  the  poet's  mind  are  still  better 
observed  in  Le  Deluge,  a  less  perfect  poem.  All  was 
serene  and  splendid  in  the  primeval  world, 

"  Et  la  beaute  du  Monde  attestait  son  enfancc," 

but  there  was  one  blot  on  the  terrestrial  paradise,  for 
"  I'Homme  etait  mechant."  In  consequence  of  a  secret 
warning,  Noah  builds  the  ark,  and  enters  it  with  his 
family.  One  of  his  descendants,  however,  the  young 
Sara,  refuses  to  take  shelter  in  it,  because  she  has  an 
appointment  to  meet  Emmanuel,  her  angel  lover,  on 
Mount  Arar,  The  deluge  arrives;  Sara  calls  in  vain 
on  her  supernatural  protector,  and,  climbing  far  up  the 
peak,  is  the  last  of  mortals  to  be  submerged.  The 
violence  of  the  flood  is  rather  grotesquely  described; 


Alfred  de  Vigny  1 1 

the  succeeding  calm  is,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  purest 
Vigny  :— 

"  La  vague  etait  paisible,  et  molle  et  cadencee. 
En  berceaux  de  cristal  mollement  balancee; 
Les  vents,  sans  resistance,  etaient  silencieux ; 
La  foudre,  sans  6chos,  expirait  dans  les  cieux ; 
Les  cieux  devenaient  purs,  et,  reflechis  dans  I'onde, 
Teignaient  d'un  azur  clair  rimmensite  profonde." 

Written  in  the  P5n'enees  in  1823,  Le  Deluge  exemphfies 
the  close  attention  which  Alfred  de  Vigny  paid  to 
English  hterature,  and  particularly  to  Byron.  In 
Moise  the  sole  influences  discoverable  are  those  of  the 
Bible  and  Milton ;  Le  Deluge  shows  that  the  French  poet 
had  just  been  reading  Heaven  and  Earth.  This  drama 
was  not  published  until  January  1823,  a  week  after 
Moore's  Loves  of  the  Angels,  which  also  was  already 
exercising  a  fascination  over  the  mind  of  Vigny.  The 
promptitude  with  which  he  transferred  these  elements 
into  his  own  language  is  very  remarkable,  and  has  never, 
I  think,  been  noted. 

Still  more  observable  are  these  English  influences  in 
Eloa,  which  was  written  in  the  spring  of  1824.  This 
is  the  romance  of  pity,  tenderness,  and  sacrifice,  of 
vain  self-sacrifice  and  of  pity  without  hands  to  help. 
It  was  received  by  the  young  writers  of  its  own  country 
with  a  frenzy  of  admiration.  In  La  Muse  Franfaise 
Victor  Hugo  reviewed  it  in  terms  of  redundant  eulogy. 
A  little  later,  and  when  so  much  more  of  a  brilliant 
character  had  been  published,  Gautier  styled  Eloa  "  the 
most  beautiful  and  perhaps  the  most  perfect  poem  in 
the  French  language."  As  a  specimen  of  idealistic 
religious  romanticism  it  will  always  be  a  classic  and  will 
always  be  read  with  pleasure;  but  time  has  somewhat 
tarnished  its  sentimental  beauty.     It  is  another  variant 


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of  The  Loves  of  the  Angels,  but  treated  in  a  far  purer 
and  more  ethereal  spirit  than  that  of  Moore  or  Byron. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  point  to  a  more  delicate 
example  of  the  school  of  sensibility  than  Eloa.  To 
submit  one's  self  without  reserve  to  its  pellucid  charm 
is  like  gazing  into  the  depths  of  an  amethyst.  The 
subject  is  sentimental  in  the  highest  degree ;  Eloa  is  an 
angel,  who,  in  her  blissful  state,  hears  of  the  agony  of 
Satan,  and  is  drawn  by  curiosity  and  pity  to  descend 
into  his  sphere.  Her  compassion  and  her  imprudence 
are  rewarded  by  her  falling  passionately  in  love  with  the 
stricken  archangel,  and  resigning  herself  to  his  baneful 
force.  Brought  face  to  face  with  his  crimes,  she  resists 
him,  but  the  wily  fiend  melts  into  hypocritical  tears, 
and  ]fcloa  sinks  into  his  arms.  Wrapped  in  a  flowing 
cloud  they  pass  together  down  to  Hell,  and  a  chorus 
of  faithful  seraphim,  winging  their  way  back  to  Paradise, 
overhear  this  latest  and  fatal  dialogue  : — 

"  '  Ou  me  conduisez-vous,  bel  ange  ?  '     '  Viens  tou jours.' 
— '  Que  votre  voix  est  triste,  et  quel  sombre  discours  ! 
N'est-ce  pas  Eloa  qui  souldve  ta  chaine  ? 
J'ai  cru  t'avoir  sauve.'     '  Non  !  c'est  moi  qui  t'entraine.* 
— '  Si  nous  sommes  unis,  peu  m'importe  en  quel  lieu  ! 
Nomme-moi  done  encore  ou  ta  sceur  ou  ton  dieu  !  ' 
— '  J'enleve  mon  esclave  et  je  tiens  ma  victime.' 
— '  Tu  paraissais  si  bon  !     Oh  !  qu*ai-je  fait  ?  '     '  Un  crime.' 
— '  Seras-tu  plus  heureux  ?  du  moins,  es-tu  content  ?  ' 
— '  Plus  triste  que  jamais.'     — '  Qui  done  est-tu  ?  '     '  Satan.'" 

Taste  changes,  and  ilea  has  too  much  the  appearance, 
to  our  eyes,  of  a  wax-work.  But  nothing  can  prevent 
our  appreciation  of  the  magnificent  verses  in  which  it 
is  written.  The  design  and  scheme  of  colour  may  be 
those  of  Ary  Scheffer,  the  execution  is  worthy  of 
Raphael. 

Before  we  cease  to  examine  these  early  writings, 
however,   we  must  spare  a  moment — though  only  a 


Alfred  de  Vigny  13 

moment — to  the  consideration  of  a  work  which  gave 
Vigny  the  popular  celebrity  which  served  to  introduce 
his  verses  to  a  wider  public.  Early  in  1826  he  was 
presented  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  Paris,  and,  fired  with 
Anglomaniac  ambition,  he  immediately  sat  down  to 
write  a  French  Waverley  novel.  The  result  was  Cinq- 
Mars,  long  the  most  successful  of  all  his  writings, 
although  not  the  best.  It  is  a  story  of  the  time  of 
Louis  XIII.  and  of  Cardinal  Richelieu;  it  deals  with 
all  the  court  intrigues  which  led  up  to  the  horrible 
assassination  of  De  Thou  and  of  Henri  d'Effiat,  Marquis 
de  Cinq-Mars.  Anne  of  Austria  is  a  foremost  figure 
on  the  scene  of  it.  Cinq-Mars,  a  very  careful  study 
in  the  manner  of  Walter  Scott,  was  afterwards  enriched 
by  notes  and  historical  apparatus,  and  by  an  essay 
"  On  Truth  in  Art,"  written  in  1827.  ^t  has  passed 
through  countless  editions,  but  it  is  overfull  of  details, 
the  plot  drags,  and  the  reader  must  be  simple  to  find  it 
an  exciting  romance.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  in  it 
the  Anglophil  tendencies  of  its  author  betrayed  in 
quotations  from  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Byron,  and 
the  restricted  circle  of  his  friends  by  frequent  introduc- 
tion of  the  names  of  Delphine  Gay,  Soumet,  Nodier, 
Lammenais.  Cinq-Mars  will  always  be  remembered 
as  the  earhest  French  romantic  novel  of  the  historical 
order. 

The  marriage  of  Alfred  de  Vigny,  the  facts  and  even 
the  date  of  which  have  been  persistently  misreported 
by  his  biographers — even  by  M.  Paleologue — took  place, 
as  M.  Seche  has  proved,  at  Pau,  on  February  3, 1825.  He 
married  Miss  Lydia  Bunbury,  the  daughter  of  Sir  Henry 
Edward  Bunbury,  a  soldier  and  politician  not  without 
eminence  in  his  day.  She  was  twenty-six  years  of  age, 
of  a  "  majestic  beauty  "  which  soon  disappeared  under 


14  French   Profiles 

the  attacks  of  ill-health,  and  everything  about  her 
gratified  the  excessive  Anglomania  of  the  poet.  She 
could  not  talk  French  with  ease,  and  curiously  enough 
when  she  had  for  many  years  been  the  Comtesse  Alfred 
de  Vigny,  it  was  observed  that  she  still  spoke  broken 
French  with  a  strong  EngUsh  accent.  It  appears  that 
this  was  positively  agreeable  to  the  poet,  who  had  a 
little  while  before  written  that  his  only  penates  were 
his  Bible  and  "  a  few  Enghsh  engravings,"  and  whose 
conversation  ran  incessantly  on  Byron,  Southey,  Moore, 
and  Scott.  It  is  certain  that  some  French  critics  have 
found  it  hard  to  forgive  the  intensity  of  Vigny's  early 
love  of  all  things  EngUsh. 

French  writers  have  laboured  to  prove  that  the 
marriage  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  was  an  unhappy  one.  It 
was  certainly  both  anomalous  and  unfortunate,  but 
there  is  not  need  to  exaggerate  its  misfortunes.  Lydia 
Bunbury  appears  to  have  been  hmited  in  intelligence 
and  sympathy,  and  bad  health  gradually  made  her 
fretful.  Yet  there  exists  no  evidence  that  she  ever 
lost  her  liking  for  her  husband  or  ceased  to  be  soothed 
by  his  presence.  He,  for  his  part,  had  never  loved  when 
he  proposed  to  Lydia  Bunbury,  and  their  relations 
continued  to  be  as  phlegmatic  on  the  one  side  as  on  the 
other.  For  four  or  five  years  they  lived  together  in 
sober  friendship,  Lydia  sinking  deeper  and  deeper  into 
the  condition  of  a  chronic  invalid.  She  was  then 
nursed  and  tended  by  her  husband  with  the  tenderest 
assiduity  and  patience,  and  in  later  years  he  was  a 
constant  visitor  at  her  sofa.  She  had  exchanged  a 
husband  for  a  nurse,  and  doubtless  renunciation  would 
have  been  the  greater  part  for  Vigny  also  to  play.  But 
over  his  calm  existence  love  now,  for  the  first  and  only 
time,  swept  hke  a  whirlwind  of  fire.     Id  the  tumult  of 


Alfred  de  Vigny  15 

this  passion  it  is  to  his  credit  that  he  never  forgot  to 
be  patient  with  and  sohcitous  about  the  helpless  invalid 
at  home.  If  morahty  is  offended,  let  this  at  least  be 
recollected,  that  Lydia  de  Vigny  knew  all,  and  expressed 
no  murmur  which  has  been  recorded. 

The  first  period  of  Alfred  de  Vigny's  life  closed  in 
1827,  when  he  left  the  army,  on  the  pretext  of  health. 
He  travelled  in  England  with  his  wife,  and  it  was  at 
Dieppe,  on  a  return  journey  in  1828,  that  he  wrote  the 
most  splendid  of  his  few  lyrical  poems.  La  Fregate 
'  La  Serieuse.'  This  ode  is  too  long  for  its  interest, 
but  contains  stanzas  that  have  never  been  surpassed 
for  brilhance,  as  for  example  : — 

"  Comme  un  dauphin  elle  saute, 

EUe  plonge  comme  lui 
Dans  la  mer  profonde  et  haute 

Ou  le  feu  Saint  Elme  a  fui. 
Le  feu  serpente  avec  grdce ; 
Du  gouvernail  qu'il  embrasse 
11  marque  longtemps  la  trace, 

Et  Ton  dirait  un  eclair 
Qui,  n'ayant  pu  nous  atteindre, 
Dans  les  vagues  va  s'6teindre, 
Mais  ne  cesse  de  les  teindre 

Du  prisma  enflamme  de  I'air." 

II 

It  is  remarkable  to  notice  how  many  EngUsh  influences 
the  nature  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  obeyed.  In  May  1828 
the  performances  of  Edmund  Kean  in  Paris  stirred  his 
imagination  to  its  depths.  He  immediately  plunged 
himself  into  a  fresh  study  of  Shakespeare,  and  still 
further  exercised  his  fancy  by  repeated  experiences  of 
the  magic  of  Mrs.  Siddons  during  a  long  visit  he  paid  to 
London.  The  result  was  soon  apparent  in  his  attempts 
to  render  Shakespeare  vocal  to  the  French,  who  had 
welcomed  Kean's  "  Othello  "  with  "  un  vulgaire  le  plus 


1 6  French   Profiles 

profane  que  jamais  I'ignorance  parisienne  ait  dechaine 
dans  une  salle  de  spectacle  "  (May  17,  1828).  Vigny 
translated  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
and,  above  all,  Othello,  which  was  acted  in  October, 
1829,  amid  the  plaudits  of  the  whole  romantic  camp  of 
Paris.  That  night  Vigny,  already  extremely  admired 
within  a  limited  circle,  became  universally  famous,  and 
a  dangerous  rival  to  Victor  Hugo,  with  whose  Hernani 
and  Marion  de  Lorme,  moreover,  comparison  soon  grew 
inevitable. 

But  Alfred  de  Vigny  cared  Httle  for  the  jealousies  of 
the  Cenacle.  He  was  now  absorbed  by  a  very  different 
passion.  It  appears  to  have  been  on  May  30,  1829,^ 
that,  after  a  performance  of  Casimir  Delavigne's  romantic 
tragedy  of  Marino  Faliero,  Vigny  was  presented  to  the 
actress,  Marie  Dorval.  This  remarkable  woman  of 
genius  had  been  bom  in  1798,  had  shown  from  the  age 
of  four  years  a  prodigious  talent  for  the  stage,  had  made 
her  debut  in  Paris  in  1818,  and  had  been  a  universal 
favourite  since  1822,  She  was,  therefore,  neither  very 
young  nor  very  new  when  she  passed  across  the  path  of 
Alfred  de  Vigny  with  such  fiery  results.  She  was  highly 
practised  in  the  arts  of  love,  and  he  a  timid  and  fastidious 
novice.  It  may  even  be  said,  without  too  great  a 
paradox,  that  the  romance  of  ^loa  was  now  enacted  in 
real  life,  with  the  parts  reversed,  for  the  poet  was  the 
candid  angel,  drawn  to  his  fall  by  pity,  curiosity,  and 
tenderness,  while  Madame  Dorval  was  the  formidable 
and  fatal  demon  who  dragged  him  down.  "  Demon," 
however,  is  far  too  harsh  a  word  to  employ,  even  in  jest, 
for  this  tremendous  and  expansive  woman,  all  emotion 
and  undisciplined  ardour.  M.  Seche  has  put  the  position 
very  well  before  us :  "  When,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two, 
*■  See  M.  L6on  S6chfe's  monograph,  pp.  53-56. 


Alfred  de  Vigny  17 

she  saw  kneeling  at  her  feet  this  gentleman  of  ancient 
lineage,  his  charming  face  framed  in  his  blond  and  curly 
hair  and  delicately  lighted  up  by  the  tender  azure  of  his 
eyes,  she  experienced  a  sentiment  she  had  never  felt 
before,  as  though  a  cup  of  cold  well-water  had  been  lifted 
to  her  burning  lips." 

Reserved,  irreproachable,  by  temperament  obscure 
and  chilly,  it  was  long  before  Alfred  de  Vigny  succumbed 
to  the  tumult  of  the  senses.  For  a  long  time  the  ani- 
mated and  extravagant  actress  was  dazzled  by  the 
mystical  adoration,  the  respectful  and  solemn  worship 
of  her  new  admirer.  She  was  accustomed  to  the  rough 
way  of  the  world,  but  she  had  never  been  loved  like 
this  before.  She  became  hypnotised  at  last  by  the  gaze 
of  Alfred  de  Vigny  fixed  upon  her  in  what  Sainte-Beuve 
has  called  "  a  perpetual  seraphic  hallucination."  A 
transformation  appeared  to  come  over  herself.  She 
fell  in  love  with  Vigny  as  completely  as  the  poet  had 
with  her,  and  she  became,  in  virtue  of  the  transcendent 
ductihty  of  her  temperament  as  an  actress,  a  temporary 
copy  of  himself.  She  was  all  reverie,  all  abstract  devo- 
tion, and  the  strange  pair  floated  through  the  stormy 
life  of  Paris,  a  marvel  to  all  beholders,  in  a  discreet  and 
delicate  rapture,  as  a  poet  with  his  muse,  as  a  nun  with 
her  brother.  This  ecstatic  relation  continued  until  183 1, 
and  during  these  years  Alfred  de  Vigny  scarcely  wrote 
anything  in  prose  or  verse,  entirely  supported  by  the 
exquisite  sentiment  of  his  attachment.  He  fulfilled 
the  dream  of  Pascal,  "  Tant  plus  le  chemin  est  long  dans 
I'amour,  tant  plus  un  esprit  deUcat  sent  de  plaisir." 

The  circumstances  under  which  this  seraphic   and 

mystical  relation  came  to  an  end  have  but  recently 

been  made  pubhc.     The  wonder  is  that  Madame  Dorval, 

so  romantic,  violent,  and  susceptible,  should  have  been 

c 


1 8  French   Profiles 

willing  so  long  to  preserve  such  an  idyllic  or  even  angelic 
reserve.  George  Sand,  who  saw  her  at  this  time,  selects 
other  adjectives  for  her,  "  Oh  !  naive  et  passionnee,  et 
jeune  et  suave,  et  tremblante  et  terrible."  But  she 
determined  at  last  to  play  the  comedy  of  renunciation 
no  longer,  and  Vigny's  subtlety  and  platonism  were 
burned  up  hke  grass  in  the  flame  of  her  seduction.  He 
was  ;d;ioa,  as  I  have  said;  she  was  the  tenebrous  and 
sinister  archangel,  and  he  sank  in  the  ecstatic  crisis  of 
her  will.  For  the  next  few  years,  Mme.  Dorval  possessed 
the  life  of  the  poet,  swayed  his  instincts,  inspired  his 
intellect.  His  genius  enjoyed  a  new  birth  in  her;  she 
brought  about  a  palingenesis  of  his  talent,  and  during 
this  period  he  produced  some  of  the  most  powerful  and 
the  most  solid  of  his  works. 

Under  the  influence  of  these  novel  and  violent  emo- 
tions, Vigny  began  at  the  close  of  183 1  to  write  Stello  ; 
he  composed  it  in  great  heat,  and  it  was  finished  in 
January  1832,  and  immediately  sent  to  press.  Stello 
is  a  book  which  has  been  curiously  neglected  by  modern 
students  of  the  poet ;  it  is  highly  characteristic  of  the 
author  at  this  stage  of  his  career,  and  deserves  a  closer 
examination  than  it  usually  receives.  It  is  a  triad  of 
episodes  set  in  a  sort  of  Shandean  framework  of  fantastic 
prose ;  the  influence  of  Sterne  is  clearly  visible  in  the 
form  of  it.  It  occupies  a  single  night,  and  presents  but 
two  characters.  Stello,  a  very  happy  and  successful 
poet,  wealthy  and  applauded,  nevertheless  suffers  from 
the  "  spleen."  In  a  fit  of  the  blue  devils,  he  is  stretched 
on  his  sofa,  the  victim  of  a  headache,  which  is  described 
in  miraculous  and  Brobdingnagian  terms.  A  mystic 
personage,  the  Black  Doctor,  a  physician  of  souls,  attends 
the  sufferer,  and  engages  him  in  conversation.  This 
conversation  is  the  book  called  Stello. 


Alfred  de  Vigny  19 

The  Black  Doctor  will  distract  the  patient  by  three 
typical  anecdotes  of  poets,  who,  in  Wordsworth's 
famous  phrase, 

"  began  in  gladness, 
But  thereof  came,  in  the  end,  despondency  and  madness." 

He  tells  a  story  of  a  mad  flea,  which  develops  into  the 
relation  of  the  sad  end  of  the  poet  Gilbert.  To  this 
follow  the  history  of  Chatterton,  and  an  exceedingly  full 
and  close  chronicle  of  the  last  days  of  Andre  Chenier. 
The  friends  converse  on  the  melancholy  topic  of  the 
rooted  antipathy  which  exists  between  the  Man  of 
Action  and  the  Man  of  Art.  Poets  are  the  eternal  helots 
of  society ;  modern  life  results  in  the  perpetual  ostracism 
of  genius.  Stello,  in  whom  Alfred  de  Vigny  obviously 
speaks,  is  roused  to  indignation  at  the  charge  of  inutihty 
constantly  brought  against  the  fine  arts,  and  charges 
Plato  with  having  given  the  original  impetus  to  this 
heresy  by  his  exclusion  of  the  poets  from  his  repubUc. 
But  the  Black  Doctor  is  inclined  to  accept  Plato's  view, 
and  to  hold  that  the  great  mistake  is  made  by  the  men 
of  reverie  themselves  in  attempting  to  act  as  social 
forces.  The  friends  agree  that  the  propaganda  of  the 
future  must  be  to  separate  the  Life  Poetic  from  the  Life 
Politic  as  with  a  chasm. 

Then  in  eloquent  and  romantic  pages  the  law  of 
conduct  is  laid  down.  The  poet  must  not  mix  with  the 
world,  but  in  soUtude  and  liberty  must  withdraw  that 
he  may  accompUsh  his  mission.  He  must  firmly  re- 
pudiate the  too  facile  ambitions  and  enterprises  of  active 
life.  He  must  keep  firmly  before  him  the  image  of 
those  martyrs  of  the  mind,  Gilbert,  Chatterton,  and 
Chenier.  He  must  say  to  his  fellow  men,  what  the 
swallows  say  as  they  gather  under  our  eaves,  "  Protect 


20  French  Profiles 

us,  but  touch  us  not."  Such  is  the  teaching  of  Stello, 
a  book  extraordinary  in  its  own  day,  and  vibrating  still ; 
a  book  in  which  for  the  first  time  was  preached,  without 
the  least  reserve,  the  doctrines  of  the  aristocracy  of 
imagination  and  of  the  illusiveness  of  any  theory  of 
equality  between  the  artist  and  the  common  proletariat 
of  mankind.  Alfred  de  Vigny  wrote  Stello  in  a  passion 
of  sincerity,  and  it  is  in  its  pages  that  we  first  see  him 
retiring  into  his  famous  "  ivory  tower."  It  is  the  credo 
of  a  poet  for  whom  the  charges  of  arrogance  and  narrow- 
ness do  not  exist ;  who  doubted  as  little  about  the  supre- 
macy of  genius  as  an  anointed  emperor  does  about  Right 
Divine. 

The  stage  now  attracted  Vigny.  In  the  summer  of 
1831  he  wrote,  and  in  1834  brought  out  on  the  stage  of 
the  Second  Theatre  Fran^ais,  La  Marechale  d'Ancre,  a 
melodrama  in  prose,  of  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  a  poison  and  dagger  piece,  thick  with  the 
intrigues  of  Concini  and  Borgia.  In  May  1833  he  pro- 
duced Qititte  pour  la  Pair,  a  trifle  in  one  act.  These 
unimportant  works  lead  us  up  to  what  is  perhaps  the 
most  famous  of  all  Vigny's  writings,  the  epoch-making 
tragedy  of  Chatterton.  This  drama,  which  is  in  very 
simple  prose,  was  the  work  of  seventeen  nights  in  June 
1834,  when  the  poet  was  at  the  summit  of  his  infatuation 
for  Madame  Dorval.  The  subject  of  Chatterton  had  been 
already  sketched  in  Stello,  and  the  play  is  really  nothing 
more  than  one  of  the  episodes  in  that  romance,  expanded 
and  dramatised.  Vigny  pubhshed  Chatterton  with  a 
preface  which  should  be  carefully  read  if  we  are  to 
appreciate  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  poet  desired 
his  play  to  be  observed. 

The  subject  of  Chatterton  is  the  perpetual  and  in- 
evitable martyrdom  of  the  Poet,  against  whom  all  the 


Alfred  de  Vigny  21 


rest  of  the  successful  world  nourishes  an  involuntary 
resentment,  because  he  will  take  no  part  in  the  game 
of  action.  Vigny  tells  the  story  of  the  young  EngUsh 
writer,  with  certain  necessary  modifications.  He  repre- 
sents him  as  a  lodger  at  the  inn  of  John  and  Kitty  Bell, 
where  at  the  end  he  tears  up  his  manuscripts  and  com- 
mits suicide.  The  Enghsh  reader  must  try  to  forgive 
and  forget  the  lapses  against  local  colour.  Chatterton 
has  been  a  spendthrift  at  Oxford,  and  has  friends  who 
hunt  the  wild  boar  on  Primrose  Hill;  Vigny  keeps  to 
history  only  when  it  suits  him  to  do  so.  These  eccen- 
tricities did  not  interfere  with  the  frenetic  joy  with  which 
the  play  was  received  by  the  young  writers  and  artists 
of  Paris,  and  they  ought  not  to  disturb  us  now.  Chat- 
terton drinks  opium  in  the  last  scene,  because  a  news- 
paper has  said  that  he  is  not  the  author  of  the  "  Rowley 
Poems,"  and  because  he  has  been  offered  the  situation 
of  first  flunkey  to  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London.  But  these 
things  are  a  symbol. 

Much  of  the  plot  of  Chatterton  may  strike  the  modern 
reader  as  mere  extravagance.  The  logic  of  the  piece  is, 
nevertheless,  complete  and  highly  effective.  It  was  the 
more  strikingly  effective  when  it  was  produced  because 
no  drama  of  pure  thought  was  known  to  the  audience 
which  witnessed  it.  Classics  and  romantics  alike  filled 
their  stage  with  violent  action ;  this  was  a  play  of 
poignant  interest,  but  that  interest  was  entirely  in- 
tellectual. The  mystical  passion  of  Chatterton  and 
Kitty  Bell  is  subtle,  silent,  expressed  in  thoughts;  here 
were  brought  before  the  footlights  "  infinite  passion 
and  the  pain  of  finite  hearts  that  5^earn  "  without  a 
sigh.  It  is  a  marvellous  tribute  to  genius  that  such  a 
play  could  succeed,  yet  it  was  precisely  in  the  huge 
psychological    sohloquy   in    the   third   act — where   the 


22  French   Profiles 

danger  seemed  greatest — that  success  was  most  eminent. 
When  the  audience  listened  to  Chatterton  murmuring 
in  his  garret,  with  the  thick  fog  at  the  window,  all  the 
cold  and  hunger  supported  by  pride  alone,  and  when 
they  hstened  to  the  tremendous  words  in  which 
the  pagan  soul  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  speaks  through 
the  stoic  boy,  their  emotion  was  so  poignant  as  to  be 
insupportable. 

The  Poet  as  the  imaginative  pariah — that  is  the  theme 
of  Chatterton  ;  the  man  of  idealism  crushed  by  a  material- 
istic society.  It  is  a  case  of  romantic  neurosis,  faced 
without  shrinking.  Chatterton,  the  dramatist  admits, 
is  suffering  from  a  malady  of  the  mind.  But  why,  on 
that  account,  should  he  be  crushed  out  of  existence? 
Why  should  there  be  no  pity  for  the  infirmities  of  in- 
spiration ?  Has  the  poet  really  no  place  in  the  state  ? 
Is  not  the  fact  that  he  "  reads  in  the  stars  the  pathway 
that  the  finger  of  God  is  pointing  out  "  reason  enough 
for  granting  him  the  trifle  that  he  craves,  just  leisure 
and  a  little  bread  ?  Why  does  the  man  of  action 
grudge  the  inspired  dreamer  his  reverie  and  the  necessary 
food  ?  Everybody  in  the  world  is  right,  it  appears, 
except  the  poets.  I  do  not  know  that  it  has  ever  been 
suggested  that,  in  his  picture  of  Chatterton,  Vigny  was 
thinking  of  the  poet,  Hegesippe  Moreau,  who,  in  1833, 
was  in  hospital,  and  who  eminently  "  n'etait  pas  de 
ceux  qui  se  laissent  proteger  aisement." 

Chatterton  is  Alfred  de  Vigny's  one  dramatic  success. 
Its  form  is  extremely  original;  it  expresses  with  great 
fulness  one  side  of  the  temperament  of  the  author,  and 
it  suits  the  taste  of  the  young  artist  not  only  in  that  but 
in  every  age.  It  is  written  with  simplicity,  although 
adorned  here  and  there,  as  by  a  jewel,  with  an  occasional 
startling  image,  as  where  the  Quaker  (a  chorus  needed 


Alfred  de  Vigny  23 

because  the  passion  of  Chatterton  and  Kitty  is  voiceless) 
says  that  "  the  peace  that  reigns  around  you  has  been 
as  dangerous  for  the  spirit  of  this  dreamer  as  sleep 
would  be  beneath  the  white  tuberose."  Whatever  is 
forgotten,  Chatterton  must  be  remembered,  and  in  each 
generation  fresh  young  pulses  will  beat  to  its  generous 
and  hopeless  fervour.  Vigny  was  writing  little  verse  at 
this  time,  but  the  curious  piece  called  "  Paris :  Eleva- 
tion "  belongs  to  the  year  1834,  and  is  interesting  as  a 
link  between  the  otherwise  unrelated  poetry  of  his 
youth  and  the  chain  of  philosophical  apologues  in  which 
his  career  as  a  poet  was  finally  to  culminate.  But  his 
main  interest  at  this  time  was  in  prose. 

Tenacity  of  vision  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  Vigny 's  characteristics.  When  an  experience  had 
once  made  its  impression  upon  him,  this  became  deeper 
and  more  vivid  as  the  years  went  on.  He  concealed  it, 
he  brooded  on  it,  and  suddenly  the  seed  shot  up  and 
broke  in  the  perfect  blossom  of  imaginative  writing. 
Hence  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  the  military 
adventures  of  his  eariiest  years,  when  the  yellow  curls 
fell  round  the  candid  blue  eyes  of  the  boy  as  he  rode  in 
his  magnificent  scarlet  uniform,  although  long  put  aside, 
were  not  forgotten.  In  the  summer  of  1835,  with  that 
curious  activity  in  creation  which  always  followed  his 
motionless  months  of  reverie,  Alfred  de  Vigny  suddenly 
set  about  and  rapidly  carried  through  the  composition 
of  the  finest  of  his  prose  works,  the  admirable  classic 
known  as  Grandeur  et  Servitude  Militaires.  The  subject 
of  this  book  is  the  illusion  of  mihtary  glory  as  exempHfied 
in  three  episodes  of  the  great  war.  The  form  of  the 
volume  is  very  notable;  its  stories  rest  in  an  auto- 
biographical setting,  and  it  was  long  supposed  that 
this  also  was  fiction.     But  a  letter  has  recently  been 


24  French   Profiles 

discovered,  written  to  a  friend  while  the  Grandeur  et 
Servitude  was  being  composed,  in  which  the  author  says 
categorically,  "  wherever  I  have  written  'I,'  what  I 
relate  is  the  truth.  I  was  at  Vincennes  when  the  poor 
adjutant  died.  I  saw  on  the  road  to  Belgium  a  cart 
driven  by  an  old  commander  of  a  battalion.  It  was  I 
who  galloped  along  singing  Joconde."  This  testimony 
adds  great  value  to  the  dehghtful  setting  of  the  three 
stories,  Laureite,  La  Veillee  de  Vincennes,  and  La  Canne 
de  J  one.  It  is  the  confession  of  a  sensitive  spirit,  striking 
the  note  of  the  disappointment  of  the  age. 

Laurette  is  an  experience  of  1815,  in  which  a  tale  of 
1797  is  told ;  the  poet  makes  a  poignant  appeal  to  the 
feeUngs  by  relating  a  savage  crime  of  the  Directory,  A 
blunt  sea  captain  is  ordered  to  take  a  very  young  man 
and  his  child-wife  to  the  tropics,  and  on  a  certain  day 
to  open  a  sealed  letter.  He  becomes  exceedingly 
attached  to  the  charming  pair  of  lovers,  but  when  at 
last  the  letter  is  opened,  he  finds  that  he  is  instructed 
to  shoot  the  husband  for  a  supposed  political  offence. 
This  he  does,  being  under  the  "  servitude  "  of  duty,  and 
the  little  wife  goes  mad.  Nothing  can  exceed  the 
exquisite  simphcity  of  the  scenes  on  shipboard,  and  the 
whole  narrative  is  conducted  with  a  masterly  and  almost 
sculptural  reserve.  The  moral  of  Laurette  is  the  illusion 
of  pushing  the  sentiment  of  duty  to  its  last  and  most 
inhuman  consequences. 

Somewhat  later  experiences  in  Vigny's  life  inspire 
La  Veillee  de  Vincennes,  a  story  of  1819.  This  episode 
opens  with  a  dehcious  picture  of  a  summer  evening  in 
the  fortress  before  the  review,  the  soldiers  lounging 
about  in  groups,  the  white  hen  of  the  regiment  strutting 
across  the  courtyard  in  her  scarlet  aigrette  and  her 
silver   collar.     It   is  full  of  those   marvellous  sudden 


Alfred  de  Vigny  25 

images  in  which  Vigny  delights,  phrases  that  take  pos- 
session of  the  fancy;  such  as,  "  Je  sentais  quelque  chose 
dans  ma  pensee,  comme  une  tache  dans  une  emeraude." 

As  a  story  La  Veillee  de  Vincennes  is  not  so  interesting 
as  its  companions,  but  as  an  illustration  of  the  poet's 
reflection  upon  life,  it  has  an  extreme  value.  The  theme 
is  the  illusion  of  mihtary  excitement;  the  soldier  only 
escapes  ennui  by  the  magnificent  disquietude  of  danger, 
and  in  periods  of  peace  he  lacks  this  tonic.  The  curious 
and  quite  disconnected  narrative  of  the  accidental  blow- 
ing up  of  the  powder  magazine,  towards  the  close  of 
this  tale,  is  doubtless  drawn  directly  from  the  experience 
of  Vigny,  who  narrates  it  in  a  manner  which  is  almost  a 
prediction  of  that  of  Tolstoi. 

In  La  Canne  de  Jonc  we  have  the  illusion  of  active 
glory.  In  the  military  hfe,  when  it  is  not  stagnant, 
there  is  too  much  violence  of  action,  not  space  enough 
for  reflection.  The  moral  of  this  story  of  disappointment 
in  the  person  of  Napoleon  is  that  we  should  devote 
ourselves  to  principles  and  not  to  men.  There  are  two 
magnificent  scenes  in  La  Canne  de  Jonc,  the  one  in 
which  the  Pope  confronts  Napoleon  with  the  cry  of 
"  Commediante  !  "  the  other  in  which  the  author  pays 
a  noble  tribute  to  Collingwood,  and  paints  that  great 
enemy  of  France  as  a  hero  of  devotion  to  public  duty. 
The  whole  of  this  book  is  worthy  of  close  attention.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  distinguished  in  modern  literature. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  novel  than  this  exposure 
to  the  French  of  the  pitiful  fallacies  of  their  military 
glory,  of  the  hoUowness  of  vows  of  poverty  and  obedience 
blindly  made  to  power,  whose  only  design  was  to  sur- 
round itself  by  a  bodyguard  of  gladiators.  Of  the 
reserve  and  sobriety  of  emotion  in  Grandeur  et  Servitude 
Militaires,  and  of  the  hmpid,  deUcate  elegance  of  its 


26  French   Profiles 

style,  there  cannot  be  any  question.  It  will  be  a  joy 
to  readers  of  refinement  as  long  as  the  French  language 
endures. 

At  the  close  of  1835  Alfred  de  Vigny  made  the  dis- 
tressing discovery — he  was  the  only  member  of  the 
circle  who  had  remained  oblivious  of  the  fact — that 
Madame  Dorval  was  flagrantly  unfaithful  to  him.  He 
became  aware  that  she  was  in  intrigue  with  no  less  a 
personage  than  the  boisterous  Alexandre  Dumas.  Re- 
cent investigations  have  thrown  an  ugly  light  on  this 
humihating  and  painful  incident.  Wounded  mortally 
in  his  pride  and  in  his  passion,  he  felt,  as  he  says,  "  the 
earth  give  way  under  his  feet."  He  was  from  this  time 
forth  dead  to  the  world,  and,  in  the  fine  phrase  of  M. 
Paleologue,  he  withdrew  into  his  own  intellect  as  into 
"  an  impenetrable  Thebaid  where  he  could  be  alone  in 
the  presence  of  his  own  thoughts."  Alfred  de  Vigny 
survived  this  blow  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
but  as  a  hermit  and  a  stranger  among  the  people. 

Ill 

When  Alfred  de  Vigny  perceived  the  treason  of 
Madame  Dorval  in  December  1835,  his  active  life 
ceased.  Something  snapped  in  him — the  chords  of 
illusion,  of  artistic  ambition,  of  the  hope  of  happiness. 
He  never  attempted  to  forgive  the  deceiver,  and  he 
never  fdrgave  woman  in  her  person.  His  pessimism 
grew  upon  him ;  he  lost  all  interest  in  the  public  and  in 
his  friends;  after  a  brief  political  effort  he  sank  into  a 
soundless  isolation.  He  possessed  a  country  house, 
called  Le  Maine-Giraud,  in  the  west  of  France,  and 
thither  he  withdrew,  absorbed  in  the  care  of  his  invalid 
wife,  and  in  the  cultivation  of  his  thoughts.     His  voice 


Alfred  de  Vigny  27 

was  scarcely  heard  any  more  in  French  literature,  and 
gradually  he  grew  to  be  forgotten.  The  louder  and 
more  active  talents  of  his  contemporaries  filled  up  the 
void;  Alfred  de  Vigny  glided  into  silence,  and  was  not 
missed.  During  the  last  twenty-eight  years  of  his 
existence,  on  certain  rare  occasions,  Vigny 's  intensity 
of  dream,  of  impassioned  reverie,  found  poetical  relief. 
When  he  died,  ten  poems  of  various  length  were  dis- 
covered among  his  papers,  and  these  were  published  in 
1864,  as  a  very  slender  volume  called  Les  Destinies,  by 
his  executor,  Louis  Ratisbonne. 

Several  of  these  posthumous  pieces  are  dated,  and 
the  eariiest  of  them  seems  to  be  La  Colere  de  Samson, 
written  in  April  1839,  when  the  Vignys  were  staying 
with  the  Earl  of  Kilmorey  at  Shavington  Park  in  Shrop- 
shire. It  is  a  curious  proof  of  the  intensity  with  which 
Alfred  de  Vigny  concentrated  himself  on  his  vision  that 
this  terrible  poem,  one  of  the  most  powerful  in  the  French 
language,  should  have  been  written  in  England  during 
a  country  visit.  It  would  seem  that  for  more  than  three 
years  the  wounded  poet  had  been  brooding  on  his 
wrongs.  Suddenly,  without  warning,  the  storm  breaks 
in  this  tremendous  picture  of  the  deceit  of  woman  and  the 
helpless  strength  of  man,  in  verses  the  melody  and  majesty 
of  which  are  only  equalled  by  their  poignant  agony  : — 

"  Tou jours  voir  serpenter  la  vipere  doree 
Qui  se  traine  en  sa  fange  et  s'y  croit  ignoree ; 
Toujours  ce  compagnon  dont  le  ccEur  n'est  pas  sur. 
La  Femme,  enfant  maladc  et  douze  fois  impur  ! 
Toujours  mettre  sa  force  a  garder  sa  colore 
Dans  son  cceur  offense,  comme  en  un  sanctuaire, 
D'oii  le  feu  s'echappant  irait  tout  devorer; 
Interdire  k  ses  yeux  de  voir  ou  de  pleurer, 
C'est  trop  !     Dieu,  s'il  le  veut,  pent  balayer  ma  cendre, 
J'ai  donne  mon  secret,  Dalila  va  le  vendre." 

He  buried  the  memory  of  Madame  Dorval  under  La 


28  French  Profiles 

CoUre  de  Samson,  as  a  volcano  buries  a  guilty  city  be- 
neath a  shower  of  burning  ashes,  and  he  turned  to  the 
contemplation  of  the  world  as  he  saw  it  under  the  soft 
light  of  the  gentle  despair  which  now  more  and  more 
completely  invaded  his  spirit. 

The  genius  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  as  the  philosophical 
exponent  of  this  melancholy  composure  is  displayed  in 
the  noble  and  sculptural  elegy,  named  Les  Destinees, 
composed  in  terza  ritna  in  1849;  but  in  a  still  more 
natural  and  personal  way  in  a  poem  which  is  among 
the  most  fascinating  that  he  has  left  behind  him,  La 
Maison  du  Berger.  Here  he  adopted  a  stanzaic  form 
closely  analogous  to  rime  royal,  and  this  adds  to  the 
curiously  English  impression,  as  of  some  son  of  Words- 
worth or  brother  of  Matthew  Arnold,  which  this  poem 
produces;  it  may  make  a  third  in  our  memories  with 
"  Laodamia  "  and  "  The  Scholar-Gipsy."  Vigny  de- 
scribes in  it  the  mode  in  which  the  soul  goes  burdened, 
by  the  weight  of  life,  like  a  wounded  eagle  in  captivity, 
dragging  at  its  chain.  The  poet  must  escape  from  this 
obsession  of  the  world;  he  finds  a  refuge  in  the  shep- 
herd's cabin  on  wheels,  far  from  all  mankind,  on  a  vast, 
undulating  surface  of  moorland.  Here  he  meditates  on 
man's  futility  and  fever,  on  the  decline  of  the  dignity 
of  conduct,  on  the  public  disdain  of  immortal  things. 
It  is  remarkable  that  at  this  lofty  station,  no  modern 
institution  is  too  prosaic  for  his  touch ;  his  treatment  of 
the  objects  and  methods  of  the  day  is  magnificently 
simple,  and  he  speaks  of  railways  as  an  ancient  Athenian 
might  if  restored  to  breath  and  vision.  A  certain 
mystical  Eva  is  evoked,  and  a  delicate  analysis  of  woman 
follows.  From  the  solitude  of  the  shepherd's  wheeled 
house  the  exile  looks  out  on  life  and  sees  the  face  of 
nature.     But  here  he  parts  with  Wordsworth  and  the 


Alfred  de  Vigny  29 

pantheists ;   for  in  nature,  also,  he  finds  illusion  and  the 
reed  that  runs  into  the  hand  : — 

"  Vivez,  froide  Nature,  et  revivez  sans  cesse 
Sur  nos  pieds,  sur  nos  fronts,  puisque  c'est  votre  loi  ; 
Vivez,  et  dedaignez,  si  vous  etes  deesse, 
L'homme,  humble  passager,  qui  dut  vous  etre  un  roi ; 
Plus  que  tout  votre  regne  et  que  ses  splendeurs  vaines, 
J'aime  la  majeste  des  souff ranees  humaines; 
Vous  ne  recevrez  pas  un  cri  d'amour  de  moi." 

Finally,  it  is  in  pity,  in  the  tender  patience  of  human 
sympathy,  in  the  love  which  is  "  taciturne  et  toujours 
menace,"  that  the  melancholy  poet  finds  the  sole  solace 
of  a  broken  and  uncertain  existence. 

It  is  in  the  same  connection  that  we  must  read  La 
Sauvage  and  La  Mort  du  Loup,  poems  which  belong  to 
the  year  1843.  The  close  of  the  second  of  these  presents 
us  with  the  pessimistic  philosophy  of  Vigny  in  its  most 
concise  and  penetrating  form.  The  poet  has  described 
in  his  admirable  way  the  scene  of  a  wolf  hunt  in  the 
woods  of  a  chateau  where  he  has  been  staying,  and  the 
death  of  the  wolf,  while  defending  his  mate  and  her  cubs. 
He  closes  his  picture  with  these  reflections  : — 

"  Comment  on  doit  quitter  la  vie  et  tous  ses  maux, — 
C'est  vous  que  le  savez,  sublimes  animaux  ! 
A  voir  ce  que  Ton  fut  sur  terre  et  ce  qu'on  laisse, 
Seul  le  silence  est  grand  :  tout  le  reste  est  faiblesse ; 
Ah  !  je  t'ai  bien  compris,  sauvage  voyageur, 
JLt  ton  dernier  regard  m'est  alle  jusqu'au  coeur  ! 
II  disait :  '  Si  tu  peux,  fais  que  ton  Sme  arrive 
A  force  de  rester  studieuse  et  pensive, 
Jusqu'k  ce  haut  degre  de  stoique  fierte 
Ou,  naissant  dans  les  bois,  j'ai  tout  d'abord  mont6. 
Gemir,  pleurer,  prier,  est  egalement  lache. 
Fais  energiquement  ta  longue  et  lourde  tache 
Dans  la  voie  ou  le  sort  a  voulu  t'appeler — 
Puis,  apr^s,  comme  moi,  souffre  et  meurs  sans  parler.'  "  ^ 

It  was  in  nourishing  such  lofty  thoughts  as  these  that 

^  We  have  here,  doubtless,  a  reminiscence  of  Byron  and  Childe 
Harold, — "  And  the  wolf  dies  in  silence." 


30  French   Profiles 

Alfred  de  Vigny  lived  the  life  of  a  country  gentleman 
at  Maine-Giraud,  reading,  dreaming,  cultivating  his  vines, 
sitting  for  hours  by  the  bedside  of  his  helpless  Lydia. 

"  Silence  is  Poetry  itself  for  me,"  Alfred  de  Vignj' 
says  in  one  of  his  private  letters,  and  as  time  went  on 
he  had  scarcely  energy  enough  to  write  down  his  thoughts. 
When  he  braced  himself  to  the  effort  of  doing  so,  as 
when  in  1858  he  contrived  to  compose  La  Bouteille  a 
la  Met,  his  accent  was  found  to  be  as  clear  and  his 
music  as  vivid  and  resonant  as  ever.  The  reason  was 
that  although  he  was  so  solitary  and  silent,  the  labour 
of  the  brain  was  unceasing;  under  the  ashes  the  fire 
burned  hot  and  red.  He  has  a  very  curious  phrase 
about  the  action  of  his  mind ;  he  says,  "  Mon  cerveau, 
toujours  mobile,  travaille  et  tourbillonne  sous  mon  front 
immobile  avec  une  vitesse  effrayante;  des  mondes 
passent  devant  mes  yeux  entre  un  mot  qu'on  me  dit 
et  le  mot  que  je  reponds."  Dumas,  who  was  peculiarly 
predisposed  to  miscomprehend  Vigny,  could  not  recon- 
cile himself,  in  younger  days,  to  his  "  immateriality,"  to 
what  another  observer  called  his  "  perpetual  seraphic 
hallucination  " ;  after  1835,  this  disconcerting  remote- 
ness and  abstraction  grew  upon  the  poet  so  markedly 
as  to  cut  him  off  from  easy  contact  with  other  men. 
But  his  isolation,  even  his  pessimism,  failed  to  harden 
him ;  on  the  contrary,  by  a  divine  indulgence,  they 
increased  his  sensibility,  the  enthusiasm  of  his  pity, 
his  passion  for  the  welfare  of  others. 

Death  found  him  at  last,  and  in  one  of  its  most  cruel 
forms.  Soon  after  he  had  passed  his  sixtieth  year,  he 
began  to  be  subjected  to  vague  pains,  which  became 
intenser,  and  which  presently  proved  to  be  the  symptoms 
of  cancer.  He  bore  this  final  trial  with  heroic  fortitude, 
and  as  the  physical  suffering  grew  more  extreme,  the 


Alfred  de  Vigny  31 

intellectual  serenity  prevailed  above  the  anguish.  In 
the  very  last  year  of  his  life,  the  poetical  faculty  awak- 
ened in  him  again,  and  he  wrote  Les  Oracles,  the  incom- 
parably solemn  and  bold  apologue  of  Le  Mont  des 
Oliviers,  and  the  mystical  ode  entitled  L'Esprit  Pur. 
This  last  poem  closed  with  the  ominous  words,  "  et 
pour  moi  c'est  assez."  On  September  17,  1863,  his 
soul  was  released  at  length  from  the  tortured  and 
exhausted  body,  and  the  weary  Stello  was  at  peace. 

It  is  not  to  be  pretended  that  the  poetry  of  Alfred  de 
Vigny  is  to  every  one's  taste.  He  was  too  indifferent 
to  the  public,  too  austere  and  arrogant  in  his  address, 
to  attract  the  masses,  and  to  them  he  will  remain  per- 
petually unknown.  But  he  is  a  writer,  in  his  best  prose 
as  well  as  in  the  greater  part  of  his  scanty  verse,  who  has 
only  to  become  familiar  to  a  reader  susceptible  to  beauty, 
to  grow  more  and  more  beloved.  The  other  poets  of 
his  age  were  fluent  and  tumultuous;  Alfred  de  Vigny 
was  taciturn,  stoical,  one  who  had  lost  faith  in  glory, 
in  life,  perhaps  even  in  himself.  While  the  flute  and 
the  trumpet  sounded,  his  hunter's  horn,  blown  far 
away  in  the  melancholy  woodland,  could  scarcely  raise 
an  echo  in  the  heart  of  a  warrior  or  banqueter.  But 
those  who  visit  Vigny  in  the  forest  will  be  in  no  hurry 
to  return.  He  shall  entertain  them  there  with  such  high 
thoughts  and  such  proud  music  that  they  will  follow 
him  wherever  his  dream  may  take  him.  They  may 
admit  that  he  is  sometimes  hard,  often  obscure,  always 
in  a  certain  facile  sense  unsympathetic,  but  they  will 
find  their  taste  for  more  redundant  melodies  than  his 
a  good  deal  marred  for  the  future.  And  some  among 
them,  if  they  are  sincere,  will  admit  that,  so  far  as  they 
are  concerned,  he  is  the  most  majestic  poet  whom  France 
produced  in  the  rich  course  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


MADEMOISELLE    AISSE 


MADEMOISELLE    AlSSfi 

Literature  presents  us  with  no  more  pathetic  figure 
of  a  waif  or  stray  than  that  of  the  poor  httle  Circassian 
slave  whom  her  friends  called  Mademoiselle  Aisse. 
But  interesting  and  touching  as  is  the  romance  of  her 
history,  it  is  surpassed  by  the  rare  distinction  of  her 
character  and  the  delicacy  of  her  mind.  Placed  in  the 
centre  of  the  most  depraved  society  of  modern  Europe, 
protected  from  ruin  by  none  of  those  common  bulwarks 
which  proved  too  frail  to  sustain  the  high-born  virtues 
of  the  Tencins  and  the  Paraberes,  exposed  by  her  wit 
and  beauty  to  all  the  treachery  of  fashionable  Paris 
unabashed,  this  little  Oriental  orphan  preserved  an 
exquisite  refinement  of  nature,  a  conscience  as  sensitive 
as  a  nerve.  If  she  had  been  devote,  if  she  had  retired 
to  a  nunnery,  the  lesson  of  her  hfe  would  have  been 
less  wholesome  than  it  is ;  we  may  go  further  and  admit 
that  it  would  be  less  poignant  than  it  is  but  for  the 
single  frailty  of  her  conduct.  She  sinned  once,  and 
expiated  her  sin  with  tears;  but  in  an  age  when  love 
was  reduced  to  a  caprice  and  intrigue  governed  by 
cynical  maxims,  Aisse's  fault,  her  solitary  abandonment 
to  a  sincere  passion,  almost  takes  the  proportions  of  a 
virtue.  Ruskin  has  somewhere  recommended  Swiss 
travellers  who  find  themselves  physically  exhausted 
by  the  pomp  of  Alpine  landscape,  to  sink  on  their  knees 
and  concentrate  their  attention  on  the  petals  of  a  rock- 
rose.     In  comparison  with  the  vast  expanse  of  French 

35 


36  French  Profiles 

literature  the  pretensions  of  Aisse  are  little  more  than 
those  of  a  flower,  but  she  has  no  small  share  of  a  flower's 
perfume  and  beauty. 

In  her  lifetime  Mademoiselle  Aisse  associated  with 
some  of  the  great  writers  of  her  time.  Yet  if  any  one 
had  told  her  that  she  would  hve  in  literature  with  such 
friends  as  Montesquieu  and  Destouches  her  modesty 
would  have  been  overwhelmed  with  confusion.  She 
made  no  pretensions  to  being  a  blue-stocking ;  she  would 
have  told  us  that  she  did  not  know  how  to  write  a  page. 
An  exact  coeval  of  hers  was  the  sarcastic  and  brilUant 
young  man  who  called  himself  Voltaire ;  he  was  strangely 
gentle  to  Aisse,  but  she  would  have  been  amazed  to 
learn  that  he  would  long  survive  her,  and  would  anno- 
tate her  works  in  his  old  age.  Her  works  !  Her  only 
works,  she  would  have  told  us,  were  the  coloured  em- 
broideries with  which,  in  some  tradition  of  a  Turkish 
taste,  she  adorned  her  own  rooms  in  the  Hotel  Ferriol. 
Notwithstanding  all  this,  no  history  of  French  literature 
would  have  any  pretensions  to  completeness  if  it  omitted 
Aisse's  name.  Among  all  the  memoir-writers,  letter- 
writers,  and  pamphleteers  of  the  early  eighteenth 
century  she  stands  in  some  respects  pre-eminent.  As 
a  correspondent  pure  and  simple  there  is  a  significance 
in  the  fact  that  her  life  exactly  fills  the  space  between 
the  death  of  Sevigne,  which  occurred  when  Aisse  was 
about  two  years  old,  and  the  birth  of  L'Espinasse,  which 
happened  a  few  months  before  Aisse's  death.  During 
this  period  of  nearly  forty  years  no  woman  in  France 
wrote  letters  which  could  be  placed  beside  theirs  except 
our  Circassian.  They  form  a  singularly  interesting  trio ; 
and  if  Aisse  can  no  more  pretend  to  possess  the  breadth 
of  vision  and  rich  imagination  of  Madame  de  Sevign6 
than  to  command  the  incomparable  accent  of  passion 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  37 

which  cries  through  the  correspondence  of  Mademoiselle 
de  L'Espinasse,  she  has  qualities  which  are  not  unworthy 
to  be  named  with  these — an  exquisite  sincerity,  an 
observation  of  men  and  things  which  could  hardly  be 
more  picturesque,  a  note  of  pensive  and  thrilling  tender- 
ness, and  a  candour  which  melts  the  very  soul  to  pity. 

In  the  winter  of  1697  or  spring  of  1698,  a  dissipated 
and  eccentric  old  bachelor,  Charles  de  Ferriol,  Baron 
d'Argental,  who  was  French  Envoy  at  the  court  of  the 
Grand  Vizier,  bought  a  little  Circassian  child  of  about 
four  years  old  in  one  of  the  bazaars  of  Constantinople. 
He  had  often  bought  slaves  in  the  Turkish  market  before, 
and  not  to  the  honour  of  his  memory.  But  this  time 
he  was  actuated  by  a  genuine  kindly  impulse.  He  was 
fifty-one  years  of  age ;  he  did  not  intend  to  marry,  and 
he  seems  to  have  thought  that  he  would  supply  himself 
with  a  beautiful  daughter  for  the  care  of  his  old  age. 
Sainte-Beuve,  with  his  unfailing  intuition,  insisted  on 
this  interpretation,  and  since  his  essay  was  written,  in 
1846,  various  documents  have  turned  up,  proving  beyond 
a  doubt  that  the  intentions  of  the  Envoy  were  parental. 
The  little  girl  said  that  her  name  was  Haidee.  She 
preserved  in  later  life  an  impression  of  a  large  house, 
and  many  servants  running  hither  and  thither.  Her 
friends  agreed  to  consider  her  as  the  daughter  of  a 
Circassian  prince,  and  the  very  large  price  (1500  livres) 
which  M.  de  Ferriol  paid  for  her,  as  well  as  the  singular 
distinction  of  her  beauty,  to  some  extent  support  the 
legend.  In  August  1698,  M.  de  Ferriol,  who  had  held 
temporary  missions  in  Turkey  for  seven  years,  was 
recalled  to  France,  to  be  sent  out  again  as  French 
ambassador  to  the  Porte  in  1699.  He  brought  his  little 
Circassian  orphan  with  him,  and  placed  her  in  the  charge 
of  his  sister-in-law,  Madame  de  Ferriol,  in  Paris.     She 


38  French   Profiles 

was  immediately  christened  as  Charlotte  Haidee,  but 
she  preserved  neither  of  these  names  in  ordinary  life; 
Charlotte  was  dropped  at  once,  and  Haidee  on  the  lips 
of  her  new  French  relations  became  the  softer  Aisse. 

Aisse's  adopted  aunt,  as  we  may  call  her,  Madame  de 
Ferriol,  was  a  very  fair  average  specimen  of  the  fashion- 
able lady  of  the  Regency.  She  belonged  to  the  notorious 
family  of  Tencin,  whose  mark  on  the  early  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century  is  so  ineffaceable.  Of  Madame  de 
Ferriol  it  may  be  said  by  her  defenders  that  she  was  not 
so  openly  scandalous  as  her  sister  the  Canoness,  who 
appears  in  a  very  curious  light  in  the  letters  of  Aisse. 
Born  in  1674,  Madame  de  Ferriol  was  still  quite  a  young 
woman,  and  her  sons,  the  Marquis  de  Pont-de-Veyle 
and  Comte  d'Argental,  were  little  children,  fit  to  become 
the  playmates  of  Aisse.  Indeed  these  two  boys  were 
regarded  almost  as  the  Circassian's  brothers,  and  the 
family  documents  speak  of  all  three  as  "  nos  enfants." 
She  was  put  to  school — it  is  believed,  from  a  phrase  of 
her  own,  "  Je  viens  de  me  ressouvenir  " — with  the 
Nouvelles  Catholiques,  a  community  of  nuns,  whose 
house  was  a  few  doors  away  from  the  Hotel  Ferriol, 
and  there  for  a  few  years  we  may  suppose  her  to  have 
passed  the  happy  life  of  a  child.  From  this  life  she 
herself,  in  one  of  the  most  charming  of  her  letters,  draws 
aside  the  curtain  for  a  moment.  In  1731  some  gossip 
accused  her  of  a  passion  for  the  Due  de  Gesvres,  and  her 
jealous  mentor  in  Geneva  wrote  to  know  if  there  was 
any  truth  in  the  report.  Aisse,  then  about  thirty-seven 
years  of  age,  wrote  back  as  follows : — 

"  I  admit,  Madame,  notwithstanding  your  anger  and 
the  respect  which  I  owe  you,  that  I  have  had  a  violent 
fancy  for  M.  le  Due  de  Gesvres,  and  that  I  even  carried 
this  great  sin  to  confession.     It  is  true  that  my  confessor 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  39 

did  not  think  it  necessary  to  impose  any  penance  on  me. 
I  was  eight  years  old  when  this  passion  began,  and  at 
twelve  I  laughed  at  the  whole  affair,  not  that  I  did  not 
still  like  M.  de  Gesvres,  but  that  I  saw  how  ludicrous 
it  had  been  of  me  to  be  so  anxious  to  be  talking  and 
pla3dng  in  the  garden  with  him  and  his  brothers.  He 
was  two  or  three  years  older  than  I,  and  we  thought 
ourselves  a  great  deal  more  grown  up  than  the  rest. 
We  liked  to  be  conversing  while  the  others  were  playing 
at  hide-and-seek.  We  set  up  for  reasonable  people; 
we  met  regularly  every  day :  we  never  talked  about 
love,  for  the  fact  was  that  neither  of  us  knew  what 
that  meant.  The  window  of  the  little  drawing-room 
opened  upon  a  balcony,  where  he  often  came ;  we  made 
signs  to  each  other ;  he  took  us  out  to  see  the  fireworks, 
and  often  to  Saint  Ouen,  As  we  were  always  together, 
the  people  in  charge  of  us  began  to  joke  about  us  and 
it  came  to  the  ears  of  my  aga  (the  Ambassador),  who, 
as  you  can  imagine,  made  a  fine  romance  out  of  all  this. 
I  found  it  out;  it  distressed  me;  I  thought  that,  as  a 
discreet  person,  I  ought  to  watch  my  own  behaviour, 
and  the  result  was  that  I  persuaded  myself  that  I  must 
really  be  in  love  with  M.  de  Gesvres.  I  was  devote,  and 
went  to  confession ;  I  first  mentioned  all  my  little  sins, 
and  then  I  had  to  mention  this  big  sin ;  I  could  scarcely 
make  up  my  mind  to  do  so,  but  as  a  girl  that  had  been 
well  brought  up,  I  determined  to  hide  nothing.  I 
confessed  that  I  was  in  love  with  a  young  man.  My 
director  seemed  astonished;  he  asked  me  how  old  he 
was.  I  told  him  he  was  eleven.  He  laughed,  and  told 
me  that  there  was  no  penance  for  that  sin;  that  I  had 
only  to  keep  on  being  a  good  girl,  and  that  he  had  nothing 
more  to  say  to  me  for  the  time  being." 

It  is  like  a  page  of  Hans  Andersen ;  there  is  the  sa,m? 


40  French   Profiles 

innocence,  the  same  suspicion  that  all  the  world  may 
not  be  so  innocent. 

The  incidents  of  the  early  womanhood  of  Aisse  are 
known  to  us  only  through  an  anonymous  sketch  of 
her  life,  printed  in  1787,  when  her  Letters  first  appeared. 
This  short  life,  which  has  been  attributed  to  Made- 
moiselle Rieu,  the  granddaughter  of  the  lady  to  whom 
the  letters  were  addressed,  informs  us  that  Aisse  was 
carefully  educated,  so  far  as  the  head  went,  but  more  than 
neglected  in  the  lessons  of  the  heart.  "  From  the  moment 
when  Mademoiselle  Aisse  began  to  lisp,"  says  this  rather 
pedantic  memoir,  "  she  heard  none  but  dangerous 
maxims.  Surrounded  by  voluptuous  and  intriguing 
women,  she  was  constantly  being  reminded  that  the 
only  occupation  of  a  woman  without  a  fortune  ought 
to  be  to  secure  one."  But  she  found  protectors.  The 
two  sons  of  Madame  de  Ferriol,  though  themselves  no 
better  than  their  neighbours,  guarded  her  as  though  she 
had  really  been  their  sister;  and  in  her  own  soul  there 
were  no  germs  of  the  fashionable  depravity.  When 
she  was  seventeen,  her  "  aga  "  came  back  from  his  long 
exile  in  Constantinople,  broken  in  health,  even,  it  is 
said,  more  than  a  little  disturbed  in  intellect.  To  the 
annoyance  of  his  relatives  he  nourished  the  design  of 
being  made  a  cardinal ;  he  was  lodged,  for  safety's  sake, 
close  to  the  family  of  his  brother.  From  Ferriol's  return 
in  171 1  to  his  death  in  1722,  we  have  considerable 
difficulty  in  realising  what  Aisse's  existence  was. 

There  is  some  reason  to  suppose  that  it  was  Lord 
Bohngbroke  who  first  perceived  the  exceptional  charm 
of  Aisse's  mind.  When  the  illustrious  English  exile 
came  to  France  in  1715,  he  was  almost  immediately 
drawn  into  the  society  of  the  Hotel  Ferriol.  One  of 
Aisse's  kindest   friends  was  that  wise  and  charming 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  41 

woman,  the  Marquise  de  Villette,  whom  Bolingbroke 
somewhat  tardily  married  about  1720,  and  it  was  doubt- 
less through  her  introduction  that  he  became  intimate 
with  Madame  de  Ferriol.  As  early  as  1719  Bolingbroke 
writes  of  Aisse  as  of  an  intimate  friend,  and  speaks  of 
her  as  threatened  by  a  "  disadvantageous  metamor- 
phosis," by  which  he  probably  refers  to  an  attack  of 
the  small-pox.  It  appears  to  have  been  during  a  visit 
to  the  chateau  of  Lord  and  Lady  Bolingbroke  that  Aisse 
first  met  Voltaire;  and  later  on  we  shall  see  that  these 
persons  played  a  singular  but  very  important  part  in 
the  drama  of  her  life.  There  seems  no  doubt  that, 
however  little  Madame  de  Villette  and  Lord  Bolingbroke 
could  claim  the  white  flower  of  a  spotless  life,  they  were 
judicious  and  useful  friends  at  this  perilous  moment  of 
her  career.  Aisse's  beauty,  which  was  extraordinary, 
and  her  dubious  social  station,  made  the  young  Circassian 
peculiarly  liable  to  attack  from  the  men  of  fashion  who 
passed  from  alcove  to  alcove  in  search  of  the  indulgence 
of  some  ephemeral  caprice.  The  poets  turned  their 
rhymes  in  her  honour,  and  one  of  their  effusions,  that 
of  the  Swiss  Vernet,  was  so  far  esteemed  that  it  was 
engraved  fifty  years  afterwards  underneath  her  portrait. 
It  may  thus  be  paraphrased  : — 

"  Aiisse's  beauty  is  all  Greek ; 

Yet  was  she  wise  in  youth  to  borrow 
Frorln  France  the  charming  tongue  we  speak. 
And  wit,  and  airs  that  banish  sorrow  : 

A  theme  like  this  deserves  a  verse 
As  warm  and  clear  as  mine  is  cold. 

For  has  there  been  a  heart  like  hers 
Since  our  Astrean  age  of  gold  ?  " 

Aisse  received  all  this  homage  unmoved.     The  Duke 
of  Orleans  one  day  met  her  in  the  salon  of  Madame  de 


42  French   Profiles 

Parabere,  was  enchanted  with  her  beauty,  and  declared 
his  passion  to  Madame  de  Ferriol.  To  the  lasting  shame 
of  this  woman,  she  agreed  to  support  his  claim,  and  the 
Regent  imagined  that  the  little  Greek  would  fall  an 
easy  prey.  To  his  amazement,  and  to  the  indignation 
of  Madame  de  Ferriol,  he  was  indignantly  repulsed; 
and  when  further  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  her, 
Aisse  threatened  to  retire  at  once  to  a  convent  if  the 
proposition  was  so  much  as  repeated.  She  was  one  of 
the  principal  attractions  of  Madame  de  Ferriol's  salon, 
and,  says  the  memoir,  "  as  Aiss6  was  useful  to  her, 
fearing  to  lose  her,  she  consented,  though  most  un- 
willingly, to  say  no  more  to  her  "  about  the  Duke. 
This  was  but  one,  though  certainly  the  most  alarming, 
of  the  traps  set  for  her  feet  in  the  brilliant  and  depraved 
society  of  her  guardians.  The  habitual  life  of  the 
Tencins  and  Paraberes  of  1720  was  something  to  us 
quite  incredible.  Such  a  "  moral  dialogue "  as  Le 
Hasard  au  Coin  du  Feu  would  be  rejected  as  the  dream 
of  a  licentious  satirist,  if  the  memoirs  and  correspondence 
of  the  Cidahses  and  the  Clitandres  of  the  age  did  not 
fully  convince  us  that  the  novelists  merely  repeated 
what  they  saw  around  them.  We  must  bear  in  mind 
what  an  extraordinary  condition  of  roseate  semi-nudity 
this  politest  of  generations  lived  in,  to  understand  the 
excellence  as  well  as  the  frailty  of  Aisse.  We  must 
also  bear  in  mind,  when  our  Puritan  indignation  is 
ready  to  carry  us  away  in  profuse  condemnation  of  this 
whole  society,  that  extremely  shrewd  remark  of  Duclos  : 
"  Le  peuple  fran^ais  est  le  seul  peuple  qui  puisse  perdre 
ses  moeurs  sans  se  corrompre." 

In  1720  the  old  ex-ambassador  fell  ill.  Aisse  imme- 
diately took  up  her  abode  with  him,  and  nursed  him 
assiduously  until  he  died.     That  he  was  not  an  easy 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  43 

invalid  to  cherish  we  gather  from  a  phrase  in  one  of 
her  own  letters,  as  well  as  from  hints  in  those  of  Boling- 
broke.  In  October  1722  he  died,  leaving  to  Aiss^ 
a  considerable  fortune  in  the  form  of  an  annuity,  as  well 
as  a  sum  of  money  in  a  bill  on  the  estate.  The  sister- 
in-law,  Madame  de  Ferriol,  to  whose  guardianship  Aisse 
had  been  consigned,  thought  her  own  sons  injured  by 
the  ambassador's  generosity,  and  had  the  extreme  bad 
taste  to  upbraid  Aisse.  The  note  had  not  yet  been 
cashed,  and  at  the  first  word  from  Madame  de  Ferriol, 
Aisse  fetched  it  and  threw  it  into  the  fire.  This  little 
anecdote  speaks  worlds  for  the  sensitive  and  independent 
character  of  the  Circassian ;  one  almost  blushes  to  com- 
plete it  by  adding  that  Madame  de  Ferriol  took  advantage 
of  her  ward's  hasty  act  of  injured  pride.  Aisse,  however, 
had  other  things  to  think  of ;  "  the  birthday  of  her  life 
was  come,  her  love  was  come  to  her."  As  early  as  1721, 
we  find  Lord  Bolingbroke  sa5dng,  in  a  letter  to  Madame 
de  Ferriol,  "  I  fully  expect  you  to  come;  I  even  flatter 
myself  that  we  shall  see  Madame  du  Deffand;  but  as 
for  Mademoiselle  Aisse,  I  do  not  expect  her.  The  Turk 
will  be  her  excuse,  and  a  certain  Christian  of  my  acquaint- 
ance her  reason."  This  seems  to  mean  that  Aisse  would 
give  as  her  excuse  for  not  coming  to  stay  with  the 
Bolingbrokes  that  she  was  needed  at  the  Ambassador's 
pillow ;  but  that  her  real  reason  would  be  that  she  ^vished 
to  stay  in  Paris  to  be  near  "  a  certain  Christian."  That 
which  had  been  vainly  attempted  by  so  many  august 
and  eminent  personages,  namely,  the  capture  of  Aisse's 
heart,  was  now  being  pursued  with  alarming  success 
by  a  very  modest  candidate  for  her  affections. 

The  Chevalier  Blaise  Marie  d'Aydie,  the  hope  of  an 
impoverished  Perigord  family  who  claimed  descent, 
with  a  blot  on  their  escutcheon,  from  the  noble  house 


t. 


44  French   Profiles 

of  Foix,  was,  in  172 1,  about  thirty  years  of  age.  He  had 
hved  a  passably  dissipated  hfe,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
CUtandres  of  the  age,  and  if  Mademoiselle  Rieu  is  to  be 
believed,  Madame  la  Duchesse  de  Berry  herself  had 
passed  through  the  fires  on  his  behalf.  He  was  poor; 
he  was  brave  and  handsome  and  rather  stupid;  he  was 
expected  one  of  these  days  to  break  his  vows  as  a  Knight 
of  Malta  and  redeem  the  family  fortunes  by  a  good 
marriage.  We  have  a  portrait  of  him  by  Madame  du 
Deffand,  written  in  her  delicate,  persistent  way,  touch 
upon  touch,  with  a  result  that  reminds  one  of  Mr.  Henry 
James's  pictures  of  character.  Voltaire,  more  rapidly 
and  more  enthusiastically,  called  him  the  "  chevalier 
sans  peur  et  sans  reproche,"  and  drew  him  as  the  hero 
of  his  tragedy  of  Adelaide  du  Guesclin.  He  had  the 
superficial  vices  of  his  time ;  but  his  tenderness,  loyalty, 
and  goodness  of  heart  were  infinite,  and  if  we  judge  him 
by  the  morals  of  his  own  age  and  not  of  ours,  he  was  a 
very  fine  fellow.  His  principal  fault  seems  to  have  been 
that  he  was  rather  dull.  As  Madame  du  Deffand  puts 
it,  "  They  say  of  Fontenelle  that  instead  of  a  heart  he 
has  a  second  brain ;  one  might  believe  that  the  head  of 
the  Chevalier  contained  another  heart."  All  evidence 
goes  to  prove  that  from  the  moment  when  he  first  met 
Aisse  no  other  woman  existed  for  him,  and  if  their 
union  was  blameworthy,  let  it  be  at  least  admitted  that 
it  lasted,  with  impassioned  fidelity  on  both  sides,  for 
twelve  years  and  until  Aisse's  death. 

It  would  appear  that  until  the  Ambassador  passed 
away,  and  the  irksome  life  at  the  Hotel  Ferriol  began 
again,  Aisse  contrived  to  keep  her  ardent  admirer  within 
bounds.  To  us  it  seems  amazingly  perverse  that  the 
lovers  did  not  marry ;  but  Aisse  herself  was  the  first  to 
insist  that  a  Chevaher  d'Aydie  could  not  and  should  not 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  45 

offend  his  relations  by  a  mesalliance  with  a  Circassian 
slave.  At  last  she  yielded;  but,  as  Mademoiselle  Rieu 
tells  us,  "  he  loved  her  so  dehcately  that  he  was  jealous 
of  her  reputation ;  he  adored  her,  and  would  have 
sacrificed  everything  for  her;  while  she,  on  her  part, 
loving  the  Chevalier,  found  his  fame,  his  fortune,  his 
honour,  dearer  to  her  than  her  own."  In  1724  she  found 
it  absolutely  necessary  to  disappear  from  her  circle  of 
acquaintance.  She  did  not  dare  to  confide  her  secret 
to  the  unscrupulous  Madame  de  Ferriol,  and  in  her 
despair  she  examined  the  circle  of  her  friends  for  the 
most  sympathetic  face.  She  decided  to  trust  Lady 
Bolingbroke,  and  she  could  not  have  made  a  wiser 
choice.  That  tender-hearted  and  deeply-experienced 
lady  was  equal  to  the  delicate  emergency.  She 
announced  her  intention  of  spending  a  few  months  in 
England,  and  she  begged  Madame  de  Ferriol  to  allow 
Aisse  to  accompany  her.  They  started  as  if  for  Calais, 
but  only  to  double  upon  their  steps.  Aisse,  in  company 
with  her  maid,  Sophie,  and  a  confidential  English  man- 
servant, was  installed  in  a  remote  suburb  of  Paris,  under 
the  care  of  the  Chevalier  d' Ay  die,  while  Lady  Boling- 
broke hastened  on  to  England,  and  amused  herself  with 
inventing  anecdotes  and  messages  from  Aisse.  In  the 
fulness  of  time  Lady  Bolingbroke  returned  and  took 
care  to  "  collect  "  Aisse  before  she  presented  herself  at 
the  Hotel  Ferriol.  Meanwhile  a  daughter  had  been 
born,  who  was  christened  Celenie  Leblond,  and  who  was 
placed  in  a  convent  at  Sens,  under  the  name  of  Miss 
Black,  as  a  niece  of  Lord  Bolingbroke.  The  abbess  of 
this  convent  was  a  Mademoiselle  de  Villette,  the  daughter 
of  Lady  Bolingbroke.  No  noveUst  would  dare  to 
describe  so  improbable  a  stratagem ;  let  us  make  the 
story  complete  by  adding  that  it  succeeded  to  perfection, 


L 


46  French  Profiles 

and  that  Madame  de  Ferriol  herself  never  seems  to  have 
suspected  the  truth.  This  daughter,  whom  we  shall 
presently  meet  again,  grew  up  to  be  a  charming  woman, 
and  adorned  society  in  the  next  generation  as  the 
Vicomtesse  de  Nanthia.  If  the  story  of  Aisse  ended 
here  it  would  not  appeal  to  a  Richardson,  or  even  to  an 
Abbe  Prevost  d'Exiles,  as  a  moral  tale. 

Between  1723  and  1726  Aisse's  life  passed  quietly 
enough.  The  Chevalier  d'Aydie  was  constantly  at  the 
Hotel  Ferriol,  but  the  two  lovers  were  not  any  longer  in 
their  first  youth.  A  little  prudence  went  a  long  way  in 
a  society  adorned  by  Madame  de  Parabere  and  Madame 
de  Tencin.  No  breath  of  scandal  seems  to  have  troubled 
Aiisse,  and  when  her  cares  came,  they  all  began  from 
within.  We  do  not  possess  the  letters  of  Aisse  to  her 
lover.  I  hope  I  am  not  a  Philistine  if  I  admit  that  I 
sincerely  hope  they  will  never  be  discovered.  We  possess 
the  love  letters  of  Mademoiselle  de  L'Espinasse ;  this 
should  be  enough  of  that  kind  of  literature  for  one 
century  at  least — it  would  be  a  terrible  thing  to  come 
down  one  morning  to  see  announced  a  collection  of  the 
letters  of  Aisse  to  her  Chevalier,  edited  by  M.  Edmond 
de  Goncourt !  In  the  summer  of  1726  there  arrived 
from  Geneva  a  lady  about  twenty  years  older  than 
Aisse,  the  wife  of  a  M.  Calandrini ;  she  was  a  step-aunt, 
if  such  a  relationship  be  recognised,  of  Lord  Bolingbroke, 
and  so  was  intimately  connected  with  the  Ferriol  circle. 
Research,  which  really  is  far  too  busy  in  our  days,  has 
found  out  that  Madame  de  Calandrini  herself  had  not 
been  all  that  could  be  desired;  but  in  1726  she  was 
devote,  yet  not  to  such  an  extent  as  to  throw  any  barrier 
between  herself  and  the  confidences  of  a  younger  woman. 
Aisse  received  her  warmly,  gave  her  heart  to  her  without 
reserve,  and  when  the  lady  went  back  to  Geneva  Aisse 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  47 

discovered  that  she  was  the  first  and  best  friend  that 
she  had  ever  possessed.  Madame  Calandrini  carried 
home  with  her  the  inmost  and  most  dangerous  secrets 
of  Aisse's  history,  and  it  is  evident  that  she  immediately 
planned  her  young  friend's  conversion. 

The  Letters  of  Aisse  are  exclusively  composed  of  her 
correspondence  with  this  Madame  Calandrini  from  the 
autumn  of  1726  to  her  own  fatal  illness  in  January  1733. 
They  remained  in  Geneva  until,  in  1758,  they  were  lent 
to  Voltaire,  who  enriched  them  with  very  interesting 
and  important  notes.  Nearly  thirty  years  more  passed, 
and  at  length,  in  1787,  they  saw  the  light.  Next  year 
they  were  reprinted,  with  a  very  delightful  portrait  of 
Aisse.  In  this  she  appears  as  a  decided  beauty,  with 
very  fair  hair,  an  elegant  and  spirited  head  lightly  poised 
on  delicate  shoulders,  and  nothing  Oriental  in  her  appear- 
ance except  the  large,  oval,  dark  eyes,  languishing  with 
incredible  length  of  eyelash.  The  text  was  confused  and 
difficult  in  these  early  editions,  and  in  successive  reprints 
has  occupied  various  biographers — M.  de  Barante,  M. 
Ravenel,  M.  Piedagnal.  I  suppose,  however,  that  I 
do  no  injustice  to  those  writers  if  I  claim  for  M.  Eugene 
Asse  the  credit  of  having  done  more  than  any  other  man, 
by  patient  annotation  and  collection  of  explicatory 
documents,  to  render  the  reading  of  Aisse's  letters 
interesting  and  agreeable. 

The  letters  of  Aiss6  to  Madame  Calandrini  are  the 
history  of  an  awakening  conscience.  It  is  this  fact,  and 
the  slow  development  of  the  inevitable  moral  plot,  which 
give  them  their  singular  psychological  value.  As  the 
letters  approach  their  close,  our  attention  is  entirely 
riveted  by  the  spectacle  of  this  tender  and  passionate 
spirit  tortured  by  remorse  and  yearning  for  expiation. 
But  at  the  outset  there  is  no  moral  passion  expressed. 


48  French   Profiles 

and  we  think  less  of  Aisse  herself  than  of  the  society  to 
which  she  belonged  by  her  age  and  education.  As  it 
seems  impossible,  from  other  sources  of  information,  to 
believe  that  Madame  Calandrini  was  what  is  commonly 
thought  to  be  an  amiable  woman,  we  take  from  Aisse's 
praise  of  her  something  of  the  same  impression  that  we 
obtain  from  Madame  de  Sevigne's  affectionate  addresses 
to  Madame  de  Grignan.  Indeed,  the  opening  letter  of 
Aisse's  series,  with  its  indescribable  tone  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  reads  so  much  like  one  of  the  Sevigne's 
letters  to  her  daughter  that  one  wonders  whether  the 
semblance  can  be  wholly  accidental.  There  is  a  childish 
archness  in  the  way  in  which  Aisse  jests  about  all  her 
own  adorers — the  susceptible  abbes,  and  the  councillors 
whose  neglected  passion  has  comfortably  subsided  into 
friendship.  There  are  little  picturesque  touches — the 
black  spaniel  yelping  in  his  lady's  lap,  and  upsetting  the 
coffee-pot  in  his  eagerness  to  greet  a  new-comer.  There 
are  charming  bits  of  self -portraiture  :  "I  used  to  flatter 
myself  that  I  was  a  little  philosopher,  but  I  never  shall 
be  one  in  matters  of  sentiment."  It  is  all  so  youthful, 
so  girlish,  that  we  have  to  remind  ourselves  that  the 
author  of  such  a  passage  as  the  following  was  in  her 
thirty-third  year  : — 

"  I  spend  my  days  in  shooting  little  birds;  this  does 
me  a  great  deal  of  good.  Exercise  and  distraction  are 
excellent  remedies  for  the  vapours.  The  ardour  of  the 
chase  makes  me  walk,  although  my  feet  are  bruised ;  the 
perspiration  that  this  exercise  causes  is  good  for  me.  I 
am  as  sun-burned  as  a  crow;  you  would  be  frightened 
if  you  saw  me,  but  I  scarcely  mind  it.  How  happy 
should  I  be  if  I  were  still  with  you  !  I  would  willingly 
give  a  pint  of  my  blood  if  we  could  be  together  at  this 
moment." 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  49 

Here  Aisse  anticipates  by  a  year  or  two  Matthew 
Green's  famous  "  Fling  but  a  stone,  the  giant  dies." 
She  has  told  Madame  Calandrini  everything.  The 
Chevalier  is  away  in  Perigord,  which  adds  to  her  vapours ; 
but  his  letters  breathe  the  sweetest  constancy.  She 
would  like  to  send  them  to  Geneva,  but  she  dares  not; 
they  are  too  full  of  her  own  praises.  She  has  been  to 
see  the  first  performance  of  a  new  comedy,  Pyratne  et 
Thisbe,  and  giggles  over  its  disastrous  fate.  This  gives 
us  firm  ground  in  dating  this  first  letter,  for  this  comedy, 
or  rather  opera,  was  played  on  the  17th  of  October, 
1726.  Nothing  could  be  more  gay  or  sparkUng  than 
Aisse's  tone. 

But  soon  there  comes  a  change.  We  find  that  she  is 
not  happy  in  the  Hotel  Ferriol.  Her  friend  and  foster- 
brother,  Comte  d'Argental,  who  Hved  on  until  1788  to 
be  the  last  survivor  of  her  circle,  is  away  "  with  his 
sweetheart  in  the  Enchanted  Island,"  and  she  has  his 
room  wliile  hers  is  being  refurnished.  But  it  will  cost 
her  one  hundred  pistoles,  for  Madame  de  Ferriol  makes 
her  pay  for  everything.  The  subjects  which  she  writes 
about  in  all  light-heartedness  are  extraordinary.  She 
cannot  resist,  from  sheer  ebullience  of  mirth,  copying 
out  a  letter  of  amazing  impudence  written  by  a  certain 
officer  of  dragoons  to  the  bishop  of  his  diocese.  Can  she 
or  can  she  not  continue  to  know  the  beautiful  brazen 
Madame  de  Parabere,  whose  behaviour  is  of  a  lightness, 
but  oh  !  of  such  a  lightness  ?  Yet  "  her  carriage  is 
always  at  my  service,  and  don't  you  think  it  would  be 
ridiculous  not  to  visit  her  at  all  ?  "  If  one  desires  a 
marvellous  tale  of  the  ways  and  the  manners  of  the 
great  world  under  Louis  XV.,  there  is  the  astounding 
story  of  Madame  la  Princesse  de  Bournonville,  and  how 
she  was  pubhcly  engaged  to  marry  the  Due  de  Ruffec 

£ 


50  French   Profiles 

fifteen  minutes  after  her  first  husband's  death;  it  is 
told,  with  perfect  calmness,  in  Aisse's  best  manner. 
The  Prince  was  one  of  Aisse's  numerous  rejected  adorers  ; 
she  rejoices  that  he  has  left  her  no  compromising  legacy. 
There  is  a  certain  affair,  on  the  loth  of  January  1727, 
"  which  would  make  your  hair  stand  on  end ;  but  it 
really  is  too  infamous  to  be  written  down."  A  wonderful 
world,  so  elegant  and  so  debased,  so  enthusiastic  and  so 
cynical,  so  full  of  beauty  and  so  full  of  corruption,  that  we 
find  no  name  but  Louis  Quinze  to  qualify  its  paradoxes. 
In  her  earlier  letters  Aisse  reveals  herself  as  a  patron 
of  the  stage,  and  a  dramatic  critic  of  marked  views. 
Her  foster-brothers,  Pont-de-Veyle  and  Argental,  were 
deeply  stage-stricken;  the  "  Enchanted  Island  "  of  the 
latter  seems  to  have  been  situated  somewhere  in  that 
ocean,  the  Theatre  de  I'Opera.  Aiss^  threw  herself  with 
heart  and  soul  into  the  famous  rivalry  between  the  two 
operatic  stars  of  Paris;  she  was  all  for  the  enchanting 
Lemaure,  and  when  that  pubhc  favourite  wilfully 
retired  to  private  life  Aisse  found  that  the  Pelhssier 
"  fait  horriblement  mal."  She  tells  with  infinite  zest  a 
rather  scurrilous  story  of  how  a  certain  famous  Jansenist 
canon,  seventy  years  of  age,  fearing  to  die  without  having 
ever  seen  a  dramatic  performance,  dressed  himself  up 
in  his  deceased  grandmother's  garments  and  made  his 
appearance  in  the  pit,  creating,  by  his  incredible  oddity 
of  garb  and  feature,  such  a  sensation  that  the  actor 
Armand  stopped  playing,  and  desired  him,  amid  the 
shrieks  of  laughter  of  the  audience,  to  decamp  as  fast 
as  possible.  Voltaire  vouches  for  the  absolute  truth 
of  this  anecdote.  But  before  Aisse  begins  to  lose  the 
gaiety  of  her  spirits  it  may  be  well  to  let  her  give  in  her 
own  language,  or  as  near  as  I  can  reach  it,  a  sample  of 
her  powers  as  an  artist  in  anecdote. 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  51 

"  A  little  while  ago  there  happened  a  httle  adventure 
which  has  made  a  good  deal  of  noise.  I  will  tell  you 
about  it.  Six  weeks  ago  Isez,  the  surgeon  [one  of  the 
most  eminent  practitioners  of  his  time]  received  a  note, 
begging  him,  at  six  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of  the  next 
day,  to  be  in  the  Rue  du  Pot-de-Fer,  close  to  the  Luxem- 
bourg. He  did  not  fail  to  be  there;  he  found  waiting 
for  him  a  man,  who  conducted  him  for  a  few  steps,  and 
then  made  him  enter  a  house,  shutting  the  door  on  the 
surgeon,  so  as,  himself,  to  remain  in  the  street.  Isez 
was  surprised  that  this  man  did  not  at  once  take  him 
where  he  was  wanted.  But  the  portier  of  the  house 
appeared,  and  told  him  that  he  was  expected  on  the  first 
floor,  and  asked  him  to  step  up,  which  he  did.  He 
opened  an  ante-chamber  all  hung  with  white ;  a  lackey, 
made  to  be  put  in  a  picture,  dressed  in  white,  nicely 
curled,  nicely  powdered,  and  with  a  pouch  of  white  hair 
and  two  dusters  in  his  hand,  came  to  meet  him,  and 
told  him  that  he  must  have  his  shoes  wiped.  After 
this  ceremony,  he  was  conducted  into  a  room  also  hung 
with  white.  Another  lackey,  dressed  like  the  first,  went 
through  the  same  ceremony  with  the  shoes ;  he  was  then 
taken  into  a  room  where  everything  was  white,  bed, 
carpet,  tapestry,  fauteuils,  chairs,  tables,  and  floor.  A 
tall  figure  in  a  night-cap  and  a  perfectly  white  dressing- 
gown,  and  a  white  mask,  was  seated  near  the  fire.  When 
this  kind  of  phantom  perceived  Isez,  he  said  to  him,  '  I 
have  the  devil  in  my  body,'  and  spoke  no  more;  for 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  he  did  nothing  but  put  on  and 
pull  off  six  pairs  of  white  gloves  which  he  had  on  a  table 
by  his  side,  Isez  was  frightened,  but  he  grew  more  so 
when,  glancing  round  the  room,  he  saw  several  fire-arms ; 
he  was  taken  with  such  a  trembling  that  he  was  obliged 
to  sit  down  for  fear  of  faUing.     At  last,  to  break  the 


52  French   Profiles 

silence,  he  asked  the  figure  in  white  what  was  wanted 
of  him,  because  he  had  an  engagement,  and  his  time 
belonged  to  the  public.  The  white  figure  dryly  repHed, 
'  What  does  it  matter  to  you,  if  you  are  paid  well  ?  ' 
and  said  nothing  more.  Another  quarter  of  an  hour 
passed  in  silence;  at  last  the  phantom  pulled  the  bell- 
rope.  The  two  white  lackeys  reappeared ;  the  phantom 
asked  for  bandages,  and  told  Isez  to  draw  five  pounds 
of  blood." 

We  must  spoil  the  story  by  finishing  it  abruptly. 
Isez  bleeds  the  phantom  not  in  the  arm,  on  account  of 
the  monstrous  quantity  of  blood,  but  in  the  foot,  a  very 
beautiful  woman's  foot,  apparently,  when  he  gets  to  the 
last  of  six  pairs  of  white  silk  stockings.  He  is  presently, 
after  various  other  adventures,  turned  out  of  the 
mysterious  house,  and  nobody,  not  even  the  King 
himself,  can  tell  what  it  all  means. 

But  very  soon  the  picture  of  Aisse's  life  begins  to  be 
clouded  over.  In  the  spring  of  1727,  she  is  in  a  peck  of 
troubles.  The  periodical  reduction  of  the  State  annuities, 
which  had  been  carried  out  once  more  during  the 
preceding  winter  by  the  new  Minister  of  Finance,  had 
brought  misery  to  many  gentlefolks  of  France.  In 
Aisse's  early  letters,  she  and  her  acquaintances  appear 
much  as  Irish  landlords  do  now ;  in  her  latest  letters  they 
remind  us  of  what  these  landlords  would  be  if  the 
National  party  reahsed  its  dream.  The  Chevalier  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  a  sufferer  personally;  he  had 
not  much  to  lose,  but  we  find  him  sympathising  with 
Aisse,  and  drawing  up  an  appeahng  letter  for  her  to  send 
to  the  Cardinal  de  Fleury.  Aisse  begins  to  feel  the 
shadows  falling  across  her  future.  If  ever  she  marries, 
she  says,  she  will  put  into  the  contract  a  clause  by  which 
she  retains  the  right  to  go  to  Geneva  whenever  she  likes. 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  53 

for  she  longs  to  tell  her  troubles  to  Madame  Calandrini. 
And  thus  is  first  sounded  the  mournful  key  to  which  we 
soon  become  accustomed  : — 

"  Every  day  I  see  that  there  is  nothing  but  virtue  that 
is  any  good  for  this  world  and  the  next.  As  for  myself, 
who  have  not  been  lucky  enough  to  behave  properly, 
but  who  respect  and  admire  virtuous  people,  the  simple 
wish  to  belong  to  the  number  attracts  to  me  all  sorts  of 
flattering  things;  the  pity  which  every  one  shows  me 
[for  her  money  losses,  doubtless]  almost  prevents  me 
from  being  miserable.  I  have  just  2000  francs  of  income 
at  most  left.     My  jewels  and  my  diamonds  are  sold." 

The  result  of  her  sudden  poverty  appears  to  have 
been  that  the  Chevalier  d'Aydie,  sorely  against  his 
inclination,  but  actuated  by  a  generous  impulse,  offered 
to  marry  her.  She  was  not  less  generous  than  he,  and 
almost  Quixotically  rejected  what  would  have  been  her 
greatest  satisfaction.  To  Madame  Calandrini,  who  was 
plainly  one  of  those  who  urged  her  to  accept  this  act  of 
restitution,  the  orphan -mother  answers  thus  : — 

"  Think,  Madame,  of  what  the  world  would  say  if  he 
married  a  nobody,  and  one  who  depended  entirely  on 
the  charity  of  the  Ferriol  family.  No ;  I  love  his  fame 
too  much,  and  I  have  myself  at  the  same  time  too  much 
pride,  to  allow  him  to  commit  such  an  act  of  folly.  He 
would  be  sure  to  repent  of  having  followed  the  bent  of 
his  absurd  passion,  and  I  could  not  survive  the  pain  of 
having  made  him  wretched,  and  of  being  myself  no 
longer  loved." 

The  Chevalier,  unable  to  live  in  Paris  without  being 
at  her  side,  fled  for  a  five  months'  exile  to  the  parental 
chateau  in  Perigord.  Aiss6  had  expressed  a  mild  sur- 
prise that  he  could  not  contrive  to  be  more  calm,  but 
their  discussions  had  always  ended  in  a  joke.     Yet  it  is 


54  French   Profiles 

plain  that  all  these  circumstances  made  her  regard  life 
more  seriously  than  she  had  ever  done  before.  In  her 
next  letter  (August  1727)  we  learn  how  miserable  a 
home  the  Hotel  Ferriol  had  now  become  for  her,  "  The 
mistress  of  this  house,"  she  says,  "  is  much  more  difficult 
to  live  with  than  the  poor  Ambassador  was."  As  for  the 
Chevalier,  he  had  scarcely  reached  Perigueux,  when  he 
forgot  all  about  the  months  he  wished  to  spend  in  the 
country,  and  hastened  back  to  Paris  to  be  near  Aisse. 
The  latter  writes,  in  her  prim  way,  "  I  admit  I  was  very 
agreeably  surprised  to  see  him  enter  my  room  yesterday. 
How  happy  I  should  be  if  I  could  only  love  him  without 
having  to  reproach  myself  for  it  !  "  It  is  plain,  in  spite 
of  the  always  modest,  and  now  timid  way  in  which  she 
writes,  that  her  moral  worth  and  delicate  judgment  were 
estimated  at  their  true  value  even  by  the  frivolous 
women  who  surrounded  her.  The  Duchess  of  Fitz- 
James  asks  her  advice  as  to  whether  she  shall  or  shall 
not  accept  the  hand  of  the  Due  d'Aumont.  The  dis- 
solute Madame  de  Tencin  cannot  forgive  or  forget 
Aisse's  tacit  disapproval  of  her  conduct.  The  gentler, 
but  not  less  naughty,  Madame  de  Parabere  purrs  around 
her  like  a  cat,  exquisitely  assiduous  not  entirely  to  lose 
the  esteem  of  one  whose  position  in  the  world  can  have 
offered  nothing  to  such  a  personage,  but  by  whose 
intelligence  and  sympathetic  goodness  she  could  not 
help  being  fascinated.  In  recording  all  this,  without  in 
the  least  being  aware  of  it,  Aisse  gives  us  an  impression 
of  her  own  simple  sweetness  as  of  a  touchstone  by  which 
radically  evil  natures  were  distinguished  from  those 
whose  voluntary  abasement  was  not  the  sign  of  a 
complete  corruption  of  spirit. 

We  are  made  to  feel  in  Aiss6's  letters,  that,  without 
being  in  any  degree  a  blue-stocking,  she  was  eager  to 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  55 

form  her  own  impression  on  the  various  intellectual 
questions  of  the  hour.     Gulliver's  Travels  had  only  been 
pubhshed  in  England  in  the  autumn  of  1726;    in  the 
spring  of  1727  Aisse  had  read  it,  in  Desfontaine's  transla- 
tion, knew  that  it  was  the  work  of  Swift,  and  praised  it 
in  the  very  same  terms  that  the  world  has  since  agreed 
to  bestow  upon  it,     Destouches  seems  to  have  been  a 
friend  of  hers,  but  when  in  the  same  year  she  went  to 
see  his  new  comedy  Le  Philosophe  Marie,  she  was  not 
blinded  by  friendship.     "  It  is  a  very  charming  comedy," 
she  wrote,  "  full  of  sentiment,  full  of  delicacy;    but  it 
does  not  possess  the  genius  of  MoU^re."    Nor  is  she  less 
judicious  in  what  she  says  about  the  masterpiece  of 
another  friend,  the  Abb6  Prevost  d'Exiles.     She  writes 
in  October  1728,  "  We  have  a  new  book  here  entitled 
Memoires  d'un  Homme  de  Qualite  retire  du  Monde,  it  is 
not  worth  much,  except  one  hundred  and  ninety  pages 
which  make  one  burst  out  crying."    These  one  hundred 
and  ninety  pages  were  that  immortal  supplement  to  a 
dull  book  which  we  call  Manon  Lescaut,  over  which  as 
many  tears  are  shed  nowadays  as  were  dropped  a  century 
and  a  half  ago.     It  is  said  by  those  who  have  read 
Prevost's   forgotten   romance,    Histoire   d'une   Grecque 
Moderne,  pubhshed  long  afterwards  in   1741,  that  it 
contains  a  full-length  portrait  of  the  author's  old  friend 
Aiss6.     It   might   be  amusing   to   compare   this  with 
Voltaire's  portrait  of  her  chevalier  in  Adelaide  du  Guesclin. 
She  was  evidently  a  centre  of  light  and  activity.    The 
young  woman  with  whom,  at  all  events  during  certain 
periods,  Bolingbroke  corresponded  by  every  post,  could 
be  no  commonplace  person.     Voltaire  vouches  for  her 
exact  and  independent  knowledge  of  events.     When 
Madame  Calandrini  is  anxious  to  know  how  a  certain 
incident  at  court  will  turn  out,  Aiss6  says,  "  You  shall 


56  French   Profiles 

know  before  the  people  who  make  the  Gazette  do,"  and 
her  letters  differ  from  the  poet  Gray's,  which  otherwise 
they  often  curiously  resemble,  that  she  seems  to  know 
at  first  hand  the  class  of  news  that  Gray  only  repeats. 
She  sometimes  shows  her  first-hand  knowledge  by  her 
very  inaccuracy.  She  gives,  for  instance,  a  long  account, 
which  we  follow  with  breathless  interest,  of  the  death  of 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  the  event,  probably,  which  moved 
Paris  more  vehemently  than  any  other  during  the  year 
1730.  Aisse  directly  charges  the  young  Duchesse  de 
Bouillon  with  the  murder  of  the  actress,  and  supports 
her  charge  with  an  amazing  array  of  horrible  details. 
The  affair  was  mysterious,  and  Aisse  was  evidently 
minutely  informed ;  yet  Voltaire,  in  whose  arms  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur  died,  declares  that  her  account  is  not  the 
true  one.  On  one  point  her  knowledge  of  her  con- 
temporaries is  very  useful  to  us.  The  priceless  corre- 
spondence of  Madame  du  Deffand  makes  the  latter,  as 
an  old  woman,  an  exceedingly  life-like  figure,  but  we 
know  little  of  her  early  life;  Aisse's  sketches  of  her, 
therefore,  and  to  say  the  truth,  cruelly  penetrating 
analysis  of  her  character  at  the  age  of  thirty,  are  most 
valuable.  The  Madame  du  Deffand  we  know  seems  a 
wiser  woman  than  Aisse's  friend;  but  the  fact  is  that 
many  of  these  witty  Frenchwomen  only  became  tolerable, 
like  remarkable  vintages,  when  they  were  growing  a  little 
crusted. 

Among  the  brightest  sections  of  Aisse's  correspondence 
are  those  in  which  she  speaks  of  her  high-spirited  and 
somewhat  dissolute  foster-brothers,  Pont-de-Veyle  and 
D'Argental.  These  two  men  were  sowing  their  wild 
oats  very  hard,  in  the  fashion  of  the  day,  and  although 
they  were  passing  the  solemn  age  of  thirty,  the  sacks 
seemed  inexhaustible.    But  so  far  as  regarded  Aiss6, 


Mademoiselle  Ai'sse  ^y 

their  conduct  was  all  that  was  chivalrous,  all  that  was 
honourably  fraternal.  Pont-de-Veyle  she  calls  an  angel, 
but  it  was  D'Argental  whom  she  loved  the  most,  and 
nothing  is  more  touching  than  an  account  she  gives, 
with  the  naivete  of  a  child,  of  a  quarrel  she  had  with  him. 
This  quarrel  lasted  eight  days,  and  Aisse  kept  her  letter 
open  until  she  could  add,  in  a  postscript,  the  desired 
information  that,  she  having  dnmk  his  health  at  dinner 
and  afterwards  kissed  him,  they  have  made  it  up  without 
any  formal  explanation.  "  Since  then,"  she  adds  in 
that  tone  of  hers  which  makes  the  eyes  of  a  middle-aged 
citizen  of  perfidious  Albion  quite  dim  after  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  "  Since  then  we  have  been  a  great  deal 
together." 

In  1728  she  had  need  of  all  the  kindness  she  could 
get.  The  Chevalier  was  so  ill  in  June  that  she  was 
obliged  to  face  the  prospect  of  his  death.  "  Duty,  love, 
inquietude,  and  friendship,  are  for  ever  troubling  my 
thoughts  and  my  body ;  I  am  in  a  cruel  agitation ;  my 
body  is  giving  way,  for  I  am  overwhelmed  with  vapours 
and  with  grief ;  and,  if  any  misfortune  should  happen  to 
that  man,  I  feel  I  should  not  be  able  to  endure  the 
horrible  sorrow  of  it.  He  is  more  attached  to  me  than 
ever;  he  encourages  me  to  perform  my  duties.  Some- 
times I  cannot  help  telling  him,  that  if  he  gets  any  worse 
it  will  be  impossible  for  me  to  leave  him ;  and  then  he 
scolds  me."  The  dreadful  condition  of  genteel  poverty 
in  which  the  Ferriol  family  were  now  living  did  not  tend 
to  make  Aisse's  home  a  bed  of  roses.  In  the  winter  of 
1728  these  famous  people  of  quahty  were  "  dying  of 
hunger."  There  was  not,  that  is  to  say,  as  much  food 
upon  their  table  as  their  appetites  required,  and  Aisse 
expected  to  share  the  fate  of  the  horse  whose  master 
gave  him  one  grain  less  of  oats  each  day  until  he  died 


58  French   Profiles 

from  starvation.  In  this  there  was  of  course  a  httle 
playful  exaggeration,  but  her  poverty  weighed  heavily 
on  Aisse,  She  had  scarcely  enough  money  for  her  daily 
wants,  and  envied  the  Chevalier,  who  was  saving  that 
he  might  form  a  dowry  for  the  httle  daughter  at  Sens, 
the  "  pauvre  petite  "  in  the  convent,  after  whom  Aiss^'s 
heart  yearned,  and  whom  she  might  but  very  rarely 
visit  as  a  stranger. 

She  spent  the  autumn  of  1729  at  Pont-de-Veyle,  the 
country  seat  of  the  Ferriol  family,  a  chateau  between 
Macon  and  Bourg.     She  took  advantage  of  this  neigh- 
bourhood to  Switzerland,  and  paid  the  long-promised 
visit  to  Madame  Calandrini  in  Geneva.    The  incident 
was  a  momentous  one  in  the  history  of  her  soul.     She 
came  back  more  uneasy,  more  irresolute  than  ever,  and 
in  deep  depression  of  spirits.     Her  first  instinct,  on 
being  left  to  her  own  thoughts  again,  was  to  enter  a 
convent,  but  Madame  Calandrini  did  not  encourage  this 
idea,  and  Aiss6  soon  relinquished  it.     She  saw,  herself, 
that  duty  called  her  to  stay  with  Madame  de  Ferriol, 
who  was  now  growing  an  invalid.     Before  leaving  Geneva 
Madame  Calandrini  had  made  a  solemn   attempt   to 
persuade  her  to  conclude  her  dubious  relations  with  the 
Chevalier.     She  tried  to  extract  a  promise  from  Aisse 
that  she  would  either  marry  D'Aydie  or  cease  to  see 
him.     But  it  is  easy  for  comfortable  matrons  in  their 
own  boudoirs  to  urge  a  line  of  conduct ;  it  is  less  simple 
for  the  unfortunate  to  carry  out  these  maxims  in  the 
hard  light  of  day.     Aisse  wrote :     "All   that   I   can 
promise  you  is  that  nothing  shall  be  spared  to  bring 
about  one  or  other  of  these  things.     But,  Madame,  it 
may  cost  me  my  hfe."     Such  words  are  lightly  said ;  but 
in  Aisse's  case  they  came  from  the  heart.    She  made  the 
sacrifice,  and  it  did  cost  her  her  life.     She  attempted  to 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  59 

melt  the  severe  censor  at  Geneva  by  extracts  from  the 
ChevaHer's  letters,  and  finally  she  made  an  appeal  which 
goes  straight  to  our  sympathy,  "  How  can  I  cut  to  the 
quick  a  violent  passion,  and  the  tenderest  and  finnest 
friendship  ?  Add  to  all  this,  gratitude  :  it  is  frightful ! 
Death  would  not  be  worse  !  However,  since  you  wish 
me  to  make  an  effort,  I  will  do  so."  Conscience  and  the 
Calandrini  were  inexorable. 

In  the  dull  house  at  Pont-de-Veyle  Aisse  was  thrown 
upon  her  own  consciousness  more  than  in  Paris.  She 
gives  us  a  picture  of  her  dreary  existence.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  Lyons,  who  was  Madame  de  Ferriol's  brother, 
was  the  only  intelligent  companion  she  had,  and  he  was 
locked  up  all  day  with  Jesuit  priests.  The  young 
Ferriols  were  in  Paris;  their  mother,  jealous,  pietistic, 
and  peevish,  wore  Aiss6  out  with  ennui.  It  was  in  this 
tension  of  the  nervous  system,  this  irritation  and  depres- 
sion of  spirits,  that  on  her  way  back  to  Paris  in  November 
she  paid  a  stolen  visit  to  Sens  to  see  her  little  daughter. 
The  letter  in  which  she  describes  the  interview  is  simply 
heartrending.  The  httle  delicate  child,  with  an  exquisite 
instinct,  clung  to  this  unknown  friend,  and  when  at  last 
Aisse  had  to  say  farewell,  her  daughter — whom  she 
must  not  call  her  daughter — wrung  the  mother's  heart 
with  mingled  anguish  and  delight  by  throwing  her  arms 
round  her  neck  and  crying  out,  "  I  have  no  father  or 
mother;  please,  you  be  my  mother,  for  I  love  you  as 
much  as  if  you  really  were!"  Aisse  could  not  tear 
herself  away ;  she  remained  a  fortnight  at  the  convent, 
more  unhappy  than  happy,  and  so  afflicted  in  spirits 
that  she  positively  had  to  take  to  her  bed.  The  little 
"  Miss  Black  "  waited  upon  her  with  a  child's  enthu- 
siasm, refusing  to  play  with  her  companions,  and  lavish- 
ing her  caresses  upon  her.    At  last  the  poor  mother 


6o  French   Profiles 

forced  herself  to  depart,  fearing  lest  she  should  expose 
her  secret  by  her  emotion.  She  made  her  way  to  Paris, 
where  she  found  the  Chevalier  waiting  for  her,  and  all 
her  good  resolutions  were  shattered  by  the  passionate 
joy  of  his  welcome.  She  did  not  know  what  to  do  or 
where  to  turn. 

In  the  beginning  of  1730  the  ChevaHer  had  another 
dangerous  illness,  and  Aisse  was  obliged  to  postpone  the 
crisis.  He  got  well  and  she  was  so  happy  that  she  could 
not  but  postpone  it  a  little  longer.  Slowly,  as  she  herself 
perceived,  her  bodily  strength  began  to  waste  away 
under  the  agitations  of  her  conscience.  We  may  pass 
over  the  slow  progress  of  the  spiritual  complaint,  which 
took  more  than  three  years  to  destroy  her  healthy  con- 
stitution. We  must  push  on  to  the  end.  In  1732  her 
health  gave  serious  alarm  to  all  those  who  surrounded 
her.  That  few  of  her  friends  suspected  the  real  state 
of  the  case,  or  the  hidden  griefs  that  were  destroying 
her,  is  proved  among  other  things  by  a  little  copy  of 
verses  which  has  been  preserved  in  the  works  of  a  great 
man.  Voltaire,  who  made  a  joke  of  his  own  supposed 
passion  for  Aisse,  sent  her  in  1732  a  packet  of  ratafia, 
to  relieve  a  painful  symptom  of  her  complaint,  and  he 
accompanied  it  by  a  flippant  versicle,  which  may  thus 
be  rendered  : — 

"  Hence  !  Through  her  veins  like  subtle  anguish  fleet  ! 
Change  to  desires  the  snows  that  thro*  them  roll ! 
So  may  she  feel  the  heat 
That  burns  within  my  soul." 

But  the  women  about  her  knew  that  she  was  dying. 
The  Parabdre  to  whom  we  may  forgive  much,  because 
she  loved  Aisse  so  well,  fluttered  around  her  with  pathetic 
tenderness ;  and  we  find  her  forcing  upon  her  friend  the 
most  beautiful  of  her  personal  possessions,  a  splendid 


Mademoiselle  Aisse  6i 

box  of  crimson  jasper.  Even  Madame  de  Tencin,  whom 
she  had  always  kept  at  arm's  length,  and  who  had  re- 
warded her  with  aversion,  startled  her  now  with  expres- 
sions and  proofs  of  affection.  Madame  de  Ferriol  herself, 
with  her  sharp  temper  and  her  ugly  speeches,  urged 
upon  her  the  attentions  of  a  Jansenist  confessor.  The 
Chevalier,  understanding  at  last  that  he  was  about  to 
lose  her,  was  distracted  with  anxiety,  and  hung  around 
the  room  until  the  ladies  were  put  to  their  wits'  end  to 
get  rid  of  him.  In  her  next  letter,  written  about 
Christmas  of  1732,  Aisse  expresses  herself  thus  : — 

"  I  have  to  be  very  careful  how  I  deal  with  you  know 
whom.  He  has  been  talking  to  me  about  a  certain 
matter  as  reasonably  and  affectionately  as  possible. 
All  his  goodness,  his  dehcate  way  of  thinking,  loving  me 
for  my  own  self,  the  interest  of  the  poor  Httle  one,  to 
whom  one  could  not  give  a  position,  all  these  things 
force  me  to  be  very  careful  how  I  deal  with  him.  For  a 
long  time  I  have  been  tortured  with  remorse;  the 
carrying  out  of  this  would  sustain  me.  If  the  Chevaher 
does  not  keep  to  what  he  has  promised,  I  will  see  him 
no  more.  You  see,  Madame,  what  my  resolutions  are; 
I  will  keep  to  them.  But  they  will  probably  shorten  my 
Ufa." 

The  explanation  of  this  passage  seems  to  be  that  the 
Chevalier,  having  put  off  marriage  so  long,  was  anxious 
not  to  break  his  vows  for  a  merely  sentimental  union, 
that  could  last  but  a  few  weeks.  She  had  extracted, 
it  would  seem,  a  sort  of  promise  from  him,  but  he  did 
not  keep  it,  and  Aisse  died  unmarried. 

In  her  last  hours  Aisse  became  completely  devote, 
but  not  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  unable  to  see  the 
humour  of  sending  such  hght  ladies  as  Madame  de 
Parabere  and  Madame  du  Deffand  through  the  length 


62  French  Profiles 

and  breadth  of  Paris  to  search  for  a  director  to  under- 
take her  conversion.  At  last  these  inexperienced 
emissaries  discovered  a  Pere  Boursault,  who  was  perhaps 
of  their  world,  for  he  was  the  son  of  the  dramatist,  the 
enemy  of  MoUere ;  from  him  Aisse  received  the  consola- 
tions of  rehgion.  A  few  days  before  she  died  she  wrote 
once  more  to  Madame  Calandrini,  and  these  are  the  last 
words  which  we  possess  from  the  pen  of  Aisse  : — 

"  I  say  nothing  to  you  about  the  Chevalier.  He  is 
in  despair  at  seeing  me  so  ill.  You  never  witnessed  a 
passion  so  violent,  more  delicacy,  more  sentiment,  more 
greatness  and  generosity.  I  am  not  anxious  about  the 
poor  little  one ;  she  has  a  friend  and  protector  who  loves 
her  tenderly.  Good-bye,  dear  Madame ;  I  am  too  weak 
to  write  any  more.  It  is  still  infinitely  sweet  to  me  to 
think  of  you;  but  I  cannot  yield  to  this  happiness 
without  tears,  my  dear  friend.  The  life  I  have  led  has 
been  very  wretched.  Have  I  ever  had  a  moment's 
enjoyment  ?  I  could  not  be  happy  alone ;  I  was  afraid 
to  think ;  my  remorse  has  never  once  left  me  since  the 
instant  when  I  began  to  have  my  eyes  open  to  my  mis- 
conduct. Why  should  I  be  alarmed  at  my  soul  being 
separated,  since  I  am  persuaded  that  God  is  all  good,  and 
that  the  moment  when  I  begin  to  enjoy  happiness  will 
be  that  in  which  I  leave  this  miserable  body  ?  " 

On  the  14th  of  March  1733,  Charlotte  Ehzabeth 
Aisse,  spinster,  aged  about  forty  years,  was  buried  in 
the  chapel  of  the  Ferriol  family,  in  the  Church  of  St. 
Roch,  in  Paris. 


A  NUN'S  LOVE  LETTERS 


I 


A  NUN'S  LOVE  LETTERS 

Brief  and  unobtrusive  as  was  the  volume  of  Lettres 
Portugaises  published  in  Paris  in  1669,  it  exercised  an 
influence  on  the  sentimental  literature  of  Europe  which 
was  very  extraordinary,  and  to  which  we  have  not  yet 
ceased  to  be  subject.  Since  the  revival  of  learning 
there  had  been  no  collection  of  documents  dealing  with 
the  experiences  of  emotion  in  which  an  element  of 
Renaissance  feehng  had  not  shown  itself  in  some  touch 
of  rhetoric,  in  some  flower  of  ornament,  in  some  trick  of 
language  that  concealed  what  it  desired  to  expose.  The 
Portuguese  Letters,  slight  as  they  were,  pleased  instantly 
and  universally  because  they  were  entirely  modern. 
The  seventeenth  century,  especially  in  France,  had 
cultivated  epistolary  literature  with  care,  even  with  too 
much  care.  There  had  been  letter-writers  by  profession, 
and  the  value  of  their  correspondence  has  been  weighed 
and  found  wanting.  Even  in  England,  where  the  French 
were  held  up  as  models  of  letter-writing,  there  were  not 
wanting  critics.     Howell  wrote  in  1625  : — 

"  Others  there  are  among  our  next  transmarine 
neighbours  eastward,  who  write  in  their  own  language, 
but  their  style  is  so  soft  and  easy  that  their  letters  may 
be  said  to  be  like  bodies  of  loose  flesh  without  sinews; 
they  have  neither  joints  of  art  nor  arteries  in  them.  They 
have  a  kind  of  simpering  and  lank  hectic  expression, 
made  up  of  a  bombast  of  words  and  finical  affected 
comphments  only.  I  cannot  well  away  with  such  fleasy 
p  65 


66  French   Profiles 

stuff,  with  such  cobweb  compositions,  where  there  is  no 
strength  of  matter — nothing  for  the  reader  to  carry  away 
with  him  that  may  enlarge  the  notions  of  his  soul." 

We  may  be  quite  sure  that  Howell  had  Balzac  in  his 
eye  when  he  wrote  this  passage,  and  to  Balzac  presently 
succeeded  Voiture.  To  the  qualities  of  Voiture's  famous 
correspondence,  to  its  emptiness,  flatness,  and  rhetorical 
elegance,  signifying  nothing  and  teUing  us  nothing,  M. 
Gaston  Boissier  has  lately  dedicated  a  very  amusing 
page  of  criticism.  Even  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  French  were  conscious  of  their  deficiency 
as  letter-writers,  and  were  anxious  to  remove  it. 
Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  who  was  as  awkward  as  the 
best  of  them,  saw  that  girls  ought  to  know  how  to  express 
their  feelings  briefly,  plainly,  and  sincerely.  In  the 
depths  of  the  wilderness  of  CUlie  may  still  be  found  rules 
for  letter-writing.  But  the  time  was  not  quite  ripe,  and 
it  is  noticeable  that  it  was  just  before  the  publication  of 
the  Portuguese  Letters  that  Mademoiselle,  in  the  agonies 
of  her  grotesque  passion,  turned  over  the  pages  of 
Corneille  for  phrases  which  might  express  the  complex 
emotions  of  her  heart.  If  she  had  waited  a  few  months 
a  manual  of  the  tender  passion  would  have  lain  at  her 
hand.  At  all  events,  the  power  to  analyse  the  feehngs 
in  simple  language,  to  chronicle  the  minute  symptoms 
of  emotion  without  rhetoric,  closely  succeeds  the  great 
success  of  these  letters;  nor  is  it  unworthy  of  notice 
that  they  appear  to  have  exercised  an  instant  influence 
on  no  less  a  personage  than  Madame  de  Sevigne,  who 
alludes  to  them  certainly  twice,  if  not  oftener,  and  whose 
great  epoch  of  letter-writing,  following  upon  the  marriage 
of  Madame  de  Grignan,  begins  with  this  very  year,  1669. 
In  England  the  influence  of  the  Portuguese  Letters,  as 
we  shall  presently  see,  was  scarcely  less  sudden  than 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  67 

decisive.  That  we  in  England  needed  such  an  influence 
on  our  letter-writers  is  not  to  be  questioned,  although  the 
faults  of  English  correspondence  were  not  those  of  the 
admirers  of  Voiture  and  Balzac.  The  French  needed 
to  throw  off  a  rhetorical  insipidity;  the  Enghsh  were 
still  in  the  toils  of  the  ornamental  allusiveness  of  the 
Renaissance.  We  find  such  a  sentence  as  the  following, 
written  by  Mrs.  Penruddock,  in  1655,  on  the  night  before 
her  husband's  execution,  in  a  letter  which  has  been 
preserved  just  because  it  seemed  direct,  tender,  and 
sincere  : — 

"  Those  dear  embraces  which  I  yet  feel  and  shall  never 
lose,  being  the  faithful  testimonies  of  a  loving  husband, 
have  charmed  my  soul  to  such  a  reverence  of  your 
remembrance,  that,  were  it  possible,  I  would,  with  my 
own  blood,  cement  your  dead  limbs  to  hve  again,  and 
(with  reverence)  think  it  no  sin  to  rob  Heaven  a  little 
longer  of  a  martyr." 

Such  persons  as  Mrs.  Penruddock  never  again  on  such 
occasions  as  this  wrote  in  this  particular  manner,  when 
Europe  had  once  read  the  Portuguese  Letters.  The  secret 
of  saying  what  was  in  the  heart  in  a  straightforward  way 
was  discovered,  and  was  at  once  adopted  by  men  and 
women  a  hundred  times  more  accomplished  and  adroit 
than  the  Canoness  of  Beja. 

A  romantic  and  mysterious  story  had  quite  as  much 
to  do  with  the  success  of  the  Portuguese  Letters  as  any 
directness  in  their  style.  In  January  1669  a  little 
duodecimo  of  182  pages,  entitled  simply  Lettres  Portu- 
gaises,  was  issued  by  Barbin,  the  leading  Paris  pubhsher. 
The  Letters  were  five  in  number;  they  were  neither 
signed  nor  addressed,  and  there  was  no  indication  of 
date  or  place.  A  prefatory  note  stated  that  they  were  a 
translation  of  certain  Portuguese  letters  written  to  a 


68  French   Profiles 

gentleman  of  quality  who  had  been  serving  in  Portugal, 
and  that  the  pubhsher  did  not  know  the  name  of  the 
writer.  He  abstained  from  saying  that  he  knew  to 
whom  they  were  addressed.  Internal  evidence  showed 
that  the  writer  was  a  nun  in  a  Portuguese  convent,  and 
that  she  had  been  forsaken,  after  an  impassioned  episode, 
by  a  French  cavalry  officer  who  had  loved  and  had 
ridden  away.  Like  the  hero  of  a  Border  ballad,  he  had 
passed,  at  the  head  of  his  regiment,  through  the  narrow 
streets  of  the  town  where  she  lived.  He  had  ridden  not 
a  bowshot  from  her  bower-eaves,  and  she  had  leaned  over 
her  balcony,  for  a  fatal  instant,  and  all  was  lost  and  won. 
The  little  book  was  read  and  continued  to  be  read; 
edition  after  edition  was  called  for,  and  in  1678  the  letters 
were  stated  to  be  written  by  "  le  Chevalier  de  C.  .  .  ." 
Saint  Simon  and  Duclos  each  informed  the  world  that  the 
male  personage  was  the  Marquis  of  Chamilly,  long  after- 
wards Marshal  of  France,  and  a  mighty  warrior  before 
the  Roi-Soleil.  But  no  indiscretion  of  memoir-writers 
gave  the  sUghtest  information  regarding  the  lady.  All 
that  appeared  was  that  her  name  was  Mariana  and  that 
her  chamber-window  looked  across  to  the  only  place 
mentioned  in  the  letters — Mertola,  a  little  town  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  Guadiana.  But  in  1810  Boissonade, 
in  a  copy  of  the  first  edition,  found  a  note  in  a  con- 
temporary hand,  stating  in  French  that  the  letters  were 
written  by  Mariana  Alcaforada,  a  nun  in  a  convent  at 
Beja,  in  the  province  of  Alem-Tejo. 

Beja,  the  theatre  of  the  Portuguese  Letters,  is  a  small 
mediaeval  city,  perched  on  a  hill  in  the  midst  of  the  vast 
fertile  plain  of  central  Portugal,  and  boasting  to  this 
day  a  ring  of  walls  and  a  lofty  citadel,  which  make  it  a 
beacon  from  all  parts  of  the  surrounding  province. 
What  the  Marquis  of  Chamilly  was  doing  at  Beja  may 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  69 

now  be  explained,  especially  as,  owing  to  the  recent 
researches  of  M.  Beauvois,  we  can  for  the  first  time  follow 
him    with    some    exactness.     The    French    were    in   a 
very  equivocal  position  with  regard  to  Portugal.     The 
Queen  of  Portugal  was  a  French  princess,  and  the  court 
of  Lisbon  was  full  of  Frenchmen,  but  Louis  XIV.  did 
not  find  it  convenient  to  give  Don  Alfonso  his  open 
support.     The  fact  was  that  Mazarin,  anxious  to  meet 
the  Spaniards  half-way,  had  sacrificed  Portugal  in  the 
negotiations  of  the  He  des  Faisans.     He  had  no  inten- 
tion, however,  of  really  leaving  his  old  allies  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  Madrid,  and  he  secretly  encouraged  the  Portu- 
guese to  fight  for  their  independence.     The  Spaniards 
had  no  sooner  seen   France   sign   the  Treaty  of   the 
Pyrenees,  late  in  1659,  than  they  threw  themselves  on 
the  frontier  of  Portugal,  and  a  guerilla  war  began  that 
lasted  for  nine  years.     All  France  could  openly  do  was  to 
permit  her  own  recently  disbanded  foreign  auxiliaries 
to  take  up  service  with  the  King  of  Portugal ;   and  as  a 
general  for  these  somewhat  dubiously  constituted  troops, 
the  Count  of  Schomberg  offered  peculiar  advantages, 
as  a  Huguenot  and  a  citizen  of  Heidelberg.     Schomberg 
arrived  late  in  1660,  and  from  this  time  forward  success 
leaned  to  the  side  of  Portugal.     M.  Beauvois  has  dis- 
covered that  it  was  not  until  1663  that  a  young  cavalry 
officer  of  great  promise  accompanied  the  non-official 
envoy  of  France,  Ablancourt,  to  the  court  of  Lisbon. 
This  young  soldier  was  Noel  Bouton,  then  known  under 
the  title  of  Count  of  St.  Leger-sur-Dheune,  who  had 
already,  although  only  twenty-six  years  of  age,  seen  a 
great  deal  of  service  in  the  field.     He  was  the  eleventh 
child  of  a  fine  old  Burgundy  noble,  who  had  trained  him 
to  arms.     In  1656  he  had  been  taken  prisoner  at  the 
siege  of  Valenciennes,  and  had  attracted  the  notice  of 


7©  French   Profiles 

the  king  by  a  succession  of  gallant  exploits.  He  is  the 
hero,  though  in  a  most  unheroic  hght,  of  the  Portuguese 
Letters. 

His  first  mission  to  Portugal  seems  to  have  been 
diplomatic;  but  on  the  30th  of  April  1664,  being  at 
Estremoz,  on  the  Spanish  frontier,  and  in  the  heart  of 
the  fighting,  he  received  from  Schomberg  the  command 
of  a  regiment  of  cavalry,  and  at  once  took  his  place  in 
the  forefront  of  the  work  in  hand.  His  name  is  hence- 
forth connected  with  the  little  victories  of  this  obscure 
and  provincial  war,  the  results  of  which,  none  the  less, 
were  highly  important  to  Portugal.  The  theatre  of  the 
campaign  was  the  hiUy  district  lying  between  the  Douro 
and  that  part  of  the  Guadiana  which  flows  westward 
before  its  course  changes  at  Juramenha.  Chamilly  is 
first  mentioned  with  glory  for  his  part  in  the  ten  days' 
siege  of  Valen9a-de- Alcantara,  in  Spain,  in  June  1664. 
A  month  later  he  helped  to  defeat  the  Spaniards  under 
the  walls  of  Castello  Rodrigo,  a  mountain  fastness  in 
the  valley  of  the  Douro.  By  this  victory  the  inde- 
pendence of  Northern  Portugal  was  secured.  All  through 
1665  Chamilly  and  his  dragoons  hovered  around  Badajos, 
winning  laurels  in  June  at  the  great  battle  of  Villa 
Vi^osa;  and  in  October,  in  the  flight  on  Badajos,  after 
the  victory  of  Rio  Xevora.  The  war  now  sank  to  a 
series  of  marches  and  countermarches,  diversified  by  a 
few  skirmishes  between  the  Tagus  and  Badajos.  But 
in  September  1667,  after  the  Count  of  St.  Leger,  who  is 
now  Marquis  of  Chamilly,  has  been  more  than  three 
years  in  Portugal,  we  find  him  for  the  first  time  dis- 
tinguishing himself  in  the  plains  of  southern  Alam-Tejo 
by  an  attack  on  the  Castle  of  Ferreira,  a  few  miles  from 
Beja.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  conjecture  that  it  was 
either  while   advancing   on,   or  more  probably  while 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  71 

returning  from  Ferreira,  that  he  passed  under  the 
balcony  of  the  Franciscan  convent  of  the  Conception, 
and  won  the  heart  of  the  susceptible  canoness.  So  long 
as  the  war  was  being  prosecuted  with  ardour  Chamilly 
could  have  had  no  time  for  such  a  liaison,  but  all  the 
troubles  of  the  Portuguese  were  practically  over  when 
Ferreira  fell.  Six  months  later,  on  the  13th  of  February 
1668,  peace  was  proclaimed,  and  Spain  accepted  the 
independence  of  Portugal.^ 

A  glance  at  the  map  will  show  the  importance  of 
these  dates  and  names  in  judging  the  authenticity  of  the 
letters  of  Mariana.  Without  them  the  critics  of  those 
letters  have  been  left  with  no  basis  for  conjecturing  when 
or  how,  between  1661  and  1668,  the  Portuguese  nun  and 
the  French  officer  met  and  parted.  We  now  see  that 
for  the  first  arduous  years  of  the  campaign  the  young 
Frenchman  was  not  near  Beja,  but  that  he  may  well  have 
spent  the  last  six  months  of  his  campaigning  in  peace 
within  or  beside  its  walls.  One  or  two  otherwise 
meaningless  phrases  in  the  letters  are  now  easily  explic- 
able; and  the  probability  that  the  story,  as  tradition 
has  sketched  it  for  us,  is  mainly  correct,  becomes  vastly 
greater.  Before  considering  what  these  expressions  are, 
however,  it  may  be  best  to  take  the  Letters  themselves 
into  our  hands. 

1  The  important  sequence  of  facts  here  given  with  regard  to 
the  military  record  of  Chamilly  in  Portugal  has  never  been  used 
before  in  any  critical  examination  of  the  Portuguese  Letters. 
That  I  am  able  to  give  it  is  owing  to  the  kindness  of  my  friend 
M.  Jusserand,  who  has  pointed  out  to  me  a  very  learned  memoir 
on  the  Chamilly  family,  full  of  fresh  facts,  buried  by  a  Burgundian 
historian,  M.  E.  Beauvois,  in  the  transactions  for  1884  of  a  local 
society,  the  "  Societe  d'Histoire  "  of  Beaune.  I  think  I  never 
saw  so  valuable  a  contribution  to  history  concealed  with  so 
successful  a  modesty.  I  am  the  more  anxious  to  express  my  debt 
to  M.  Beauvois  for  his  facts,  in  that  I  wholly  disagree  with  his 
conclusions  when  he  comes  to  deal  with  the  Portuguese  Letters. 


J^  French  Profiles 

It  is  with  some  trepidation  that  I  confess  that,  in  my 
judgment,  the  central  fact  on  which  the  chronicle  of 
the  Portuguese  Letters  hangs  has  hitherto  been  over- 
looked by  all  their  editors  and  critics.  As  the  Letters 
were  published  without  dates,  without  indications  of 
place  or  address,  they  took  a  sequence  which  has  ever 
since  been  religiously  adhered  to.  But  reading  them 
through  very  carefully — as  Mark  Pattison  used  to  say  all 
books  should  be  read,  pencil  in  hand — I  had  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  this  order  was  not  merely  incorrect,  but 
fatal,  if  persevered  in,  to  any  historic  credence  in  the 
Letters  as  a  whole.  The  fourth  has  all  the  appearance 
of  being  the  earhest  in  date,  and  M.  Beauvois'  discoveries 
make  this  almost  certain.  We  must  understand  that  all 
the  five  letters  are  the  successive  appeals  of  a  forsaken 
woman,  who  repeats  her  expressions  of  love  and  lamenta- 
tion without  much  indication  of  scene  or  reason.  But 
some  such  indication  may,  by  reading  the  text  with 
great  care,  be  discovered.  The  fourth  letter,  which  I 
beheve  to  be  the  first,  opens  thus  abruptly  : — 

"  Your  lieutenant  tells  me  that  a  storm  forced  you 
to  put  into  port  in  the  kingdom  of  Algarve.  I  am  afraid 
that  you  must  have  greatly  suffered  on  the  sea,  and  this 
fear  h£LS  so  occupied  me  that  I  have  thought  no  more 
about  all  my  own  troubles.  Are  you  quite  sure  that 
your  lieutenant  takes  more  interest  than  I  do  in  all  that 
happens  to  you  ?  Why  then  do  you  keep  him  better 
informed  ?  And,  finally,  why  have  you  not  written 
to  me  ?  I  am  very  unfortunate  if  you  found  no  oppor- 
tunity of  writing  to  me  before  you  started,  and  I  am  still 
more  so  if  you  did  find  one  without  using  it  to  write  to 
me.  Your  injustice  and  your  ingratitude  are  extreme, 
yet  I  should  be  in  despair  if  they  brought  you  mis- 
fortujie." 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  73 

The  tone  of  this  is  angry  and  indignant,  but  it  is  not 
the  tone  of  a  woman  who  considers  herself  abandoned. 
She  has  evidently  parted  with  her  lover  unwillingly,  and 
with  suspicion,  but  she  does  not  resign  the  right  to 
scold  him.  Moreover,  it  is  noticeable  that  he  has  but 
just  started,  and  that  he  had  hardly  put  to  sea  before  he 
was  driven  into  a  port  in  Algarve.  Not  a  critic  of  the 
Portuguese  Letters  has  known  what  to  make  of  this 
latter  point,  for  Algarve  is  the  strip  running  along  the 
extreme  south  coast  of  Portugal,  and  no  ship  leaving 
Lisbon  for  France  could  possibly  be  driven  into  ports 
that  look  right  across  into  Africa.  But  as  we  now  see 
Chamilly  slowly  descending  the  frontier  from  the  Douro 
to  Beja,  and  as  we  presently  find  Mariana  overwhelmed 
with  emotion  at  the  sight  of  the  road  to  Mertola,  we 
have  but  to  look  again  at  the  map  to  observe  that  Mertola 
would  be  naturally  the  first  stage  in  a  journey  continued 
south  to  the  mouth  of  the  Guadiana,  which  is  navigable 
from  that  town  onwards.  On  reaching  the  sea  Chamilly 
would  take  ship,  and  would  most  naturally  be  driven 
by  the  first  storm  into  some  port  of  Algarve,  from  which 
the  news  would  promptly  be  brought  back  to  Beja. 
When  we  find  the  Portuguese  nun  speaking  of  some 
early  confidences  as  made  "  five  or  six  months  ago,"  and 
when  we  recollect  that  the  capture  of  Ferreira  took  place 
five  months  before  the  peace  with  Spain,  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  the  events  upon  which  the  Letters  are  founded 
took  place  between  September  1667  and  February  1668, 
soon  after  which  latter  date  Chamilly  doubtless  made 
an  excuse  for  setting  forth  for  France.  Thus  a  series 
of  minute  expressions  in  this  so-called  fourth  letter — 
expressions  hitherto  meaningless  or  misleading — are 
shown  to  be  of  vital  importance  in  testifying  to  the 
j^enuineness  of  the  correspondence. 


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Another  fragment  from  this  same  letter  will  help 
to  complete  the  picture  of  Chamilly's  desertion  : — 

"  You  have  taken  advantage  of  the  excuses  which 
you  had  for  going  back  to  France.  A  ship  was  starting. 
Why  did  you  not  let  her  start  ?  Your  family  had 
written  to  you.  Do  you  not  know  what  persecutions 
I  have  endured  from  mine  ?  Your  honour  compelled 
you  to  forsake  me.  Have  I  been  so  solicitous  about  my 
honour  ?  You  were  forced  to  go  to  serve  your  king.  If 
all  that  is  said  of  him  be  true,  he  has  no  need  of  your  help, 
and  he  would  have  excused  you.  I  should  have  been 
only  too  happy  had  we  passed  our  lives  together ;  but 
since  a  cruel  absence  had  to  divide  us,  it  seems  to  me 
that  I  ought  to  be  satisfied  in  knowing  that  I  am  not 
faithless  to  you.  Indeed,  for  all  the  world  contains 
would  I  not  commit  so  base  an  action.  What !  have 
you  known  the  depths  of  my  heart  and  my  affection, 
and  have  yet  been  able  to  persuade  yourself  to  abandon 
me  for  ever,  and  to  expose  me  to  the  terror  of  believing 
that  you  will  for  the  future  only  think  of  me  to  sacrifice 
the  memory  of  me  to  some  new  passion  !  " 

The  freedom  with  which  this  cloistered  lady  and  her 
foreign  lover  met  has  been  objected  to  as  improbable. 
But  the  manners  of  Portugal  in  the  seventeenth  century 
gave  to  women  of  the  rehgious  orders  a  social  freedom 
denied  to  ordinary  wives  and  daughters.  In  the 
Memoires  of  Ablancourt,  whom  Chamilly  attended  on 
his  first  mission  to  Lisbon,  we  read  of  royal  parties  of 
pleasure  at  the  Convent  of  Santa  Speranza,  where  the 
nuns  and  courtiers  mingled  in  theatrical  representations 
before  the  king  and  queen.  Another  contemporary  ac- 
count admits  that  the  French  and  English  were  so  much 
beloved  in  Portugal  that  some  hberty  was  allowed  to  them 
beyond  what  a  Portuguese  gentleman  might  indulge  in. 


A   Nun's  Love  Letters  75 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  if  convents  might  without  scandal 
be  opened  to  men  in  social  intercourse,  it  is  not  probable 
that  they  would  be  closed  to  a  brilliant  foreign  ally  fresh 
from  Villa  Vigosa  or  Ferreira.  But  we  must  again  allow 
Mariana  Alcaforada  to  tell  her  own  tale  : — 

"  Every  one  has  noticed  the  entire  change  in  my  mood, 
my  manners,  and  my  person.  My  mother  has  spoken 
to  me  about  it,  with  bitterness  at  first,  and  then  with  a 
certain  kindliness.  I  do  not  know  what  I  said  to  her 
in  reply;  I  fancy  I  must  have  confessed  everything  to 
her.  The  strictest  of  the  nuns  here  are  sorry  to  see 
what  a  condition  I  am  in ;  they  even  treat  me  on  account 
of  it  with  some  consideration  and  some  tenderness. 
Everybody  is  touched  at  my  love,  and  you  alone  remain 
perfectly  indifferent,  writing  me  only  cold  letters,  full 
of  repetitions ;  half  the  paper  is  not  filled,  and  you  are 
mde  enough  to  let  me  see  that  you  are  dying  with 
impatience  to  be  done  writing.  Dofia  Brites  has  been 
persecuting  me  these  last  days  to  get  me  to  leave  my 
room;  and  fancying  that  it  would  amuse  me,  she  took 
me  for  a  turn  on  the  balcony  from  which  one  has  a  view 
of  Mertola ;  I  went  with  her,  and  at  once  a  cruel  memory 
came  back  to  me,  a  memory  which  kept  me  weeping  all 
the  remainder  of  the  day.  She  brought  me  back,  and 
I  threw  myself  on  my  bed,  where  I  could  but  reflect  a 
thousand  times  over  how  little  chance  there  was  of  my 
ever  being  cured.  Whatever  is  done  to  solace  me 
augments  my  suffering,  and  in  the  remedies  themselves 
I  find  intimate  reasons  why  I  should  be  wretched.  I 
have  often  seen  you  pass  that  spot  with  an  air  that 
charmed  me,  and  I  was  on  that  balcony  on  that  fatal 
day  when  I  first  began  to  feel  the  symptoms  of  my  ill- 
starred  passion.  I  fancied  that  you  wished  to  please 
me,  although  you  did  not  know  me.     I  persuaded  myself 


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that  you  had  noticed  me  among  all  the  ladies  that  were 
with  me.  I  imagined  that  when  you  drew  rein,  you 
were  well  pleased  that  I  should  have  a  better  sight  of 
you,  and  that  I  should  admire  your  skill  and  how  graceful 
you  looked  on  horseback.  I  was  surprised  to  notice 
that  I  was  frightened  when  you  took  your  horse  through 
a  difficult  place;  the  fact  is  that  I  was  taking  a  secret 
interest  in  all  your  actions." 

We  see  that  he  wrote  to  her  at  first,  although  not  from 
that  port  of  Algarve,  in  which  he  had  thought  of  nothing 
but  business.  It  does  not  appear  that  after  this  he  ever 
wrote  again,  nor  as  her  memory  loses  its  sharpness  does 
she  ever,  after  this  first  letter,  regain  the  same  clearness 
of  reminiscence.  We  may  quote  once  more  from  this, 
the  most  interesting  of  the  famous  five.  It  is  thus  that 
Mariana  closes  her  pathetic  appeal : — 

"  I  want  to  have  the  portraits  of  your  brother  and  of 
your  sister-in-law.  Whatever  is  anything  to  you  is  very 
dear  to  me,  and  I  am  wholly  devoted  to  what  concerns 
you.  I  have  no  will  of  my  own  left.  There  are  moments 
in  which  it  seems  to  me  that  I  should  be  humble  enough 
to  serve  her  whom  you  love.  .  .  .  An  officer  has  been 
waiting  for  this  letter  for  a  long  time ;  I  had  made  up 
my  mind  to  write  it  in  such  a  way  that  you  may  not  be 
disgusted  when  you  receive  it,  but  I  see  I  have  made  it 
too  extravagant.  I  must  close  it.  Alas  !  it  is  out  of  my 
power  to  do  so.  I  seem  to  be  talking  to  you  when  I 
write  to  you,  and  you  become  a  little  more  present  to 
me  then.  .  .  .  The  ofiicer  who  is  to  take  this  letter 
reminds  me  for  the  fourth  time  that  he  wishes  to  start. 
What  a  hurry  he  is  in  !  He,  no  doubt,  is  forsaking  some 
unhappy  lady  in  this  country.  Farewell !  it  is  harder 
for  me  to  finish  my  letter  than  it  was  for  you  to  abandon 
me,  perhaps  for  ever." 


A  Nun's  Love   Letters  77 

The  remaining  letters  give  fewer  indications  of  date 
and  sequence  than  the  fourth,  nor  are  they  so  picturesque. 
But  the  reader  will  not  seek  the  Portuguese  Letters,  as 
he  seeks  the  Memoires  of  Madame  de  Motteville,  or  even 
the  correspondence  of  Madame  de  Sevigne,  mainly  for 
sparkhng  incident  and  the  pretty  details  of  contemporary 
life.  The  value  of  these  epistles  rests  in  their  sincerity 
as  a  revelation  of  the  heart.  Poor  Mariana  had  no 
inclination  to  describe  the  daily  life  of  her  fellow-nuns 
or  the  intrigues  of  society  in  Beja.  She  has  been 
deceived,  the  man  she  loves  is  absent,  and  as  she  weeps 
without  cessation,  she  cannot  help  confessing  to  herself 
that  she  does  not  expect  to  see  him  back  again. 

"  I  resigned  my  life  to  you,"  she  says  in  the  so-called 
first  letter,  "  as  soon  as  I  saw  you,  and  I  feel  some 
pleasure  now  in  sacrificing  to  you  what  you  will  not 
accept.  A  thousand  times  a  day  I  send  my  sighs  out 
after  you ;  they  search  for  you  everywhere,  and  for  all 
reward  of  so  much  disquietude  what  do  they  bring  me 
back  but  too  sincere  a  warning  from  my  evil  fortune, 
which  is  too  cruel  to  suffer  me  to  deceive  myself,  and 
which  says  to  me  every  moment.  Cease,  cease,  unfortu- 
nate Mariana  !  vainly  thou  dost  consume  thyself,  vainly 
dost  seek  a  lover  whom  thou  shalt  never  see  again,  who 
has  crost  the  ocean  to  escape  from  thee,  who  is  now  in 
France  in  the  midst  of  pleasures,  who  gives  no  single 
moment  to  the  thought  of  thy  sufferings,  and  who  can 
well  dispense  with  all  these  thy  needless  transports." 

She  will  not,  however,  yet  admit  that  she  is  wholly 
deserted.  She  has  received  a  letter  from  him,  and  though 
its  tone  was  so  far  from  responding  to  her  own  that  it 
threw  her  beside  herself  for  three  hours,  it  has  re- 
awakened her  hopes. 

"  Can  you  ever  be  contented  by  a  passion  less  ardent 


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than  mine  ?  You  will,  perhaps,  find  elsewhere  more 
beauty  (although  you  used  to  tell  me  that  I  was  beautiful 
enough)  but  you  will  never  find  so  much  love  again,  and 
all  the  rest  is  nothing.  Do  not  fill  out  your  letters  with 
needless  matter,  and  you  may  save  yourself  the  trouble 
of  reminding  me  to  remember  you.  I  cannot  forget  you, 
and  I  cannot  forget,  too,  that  you  made  me  hope  that 
you  would  come  back  to  me  for  awhile.  Ah  !  why  will 
you  not  spend  all  your  life  here  ?  Were  it  possible  for 
me  to  quit  this  wretched  cloister,  I  would  not  stay  in 
Portugal  to  see  whether  you  performed  your  promises. 
I  would  not  count  the  cost,  but  would  fly  to  seek  you, 
to  follow  you,  to  love  you.  I  dare  not  persuade  myself 
that  this  will  be ;  I  will  not  nourish  such  a  hope  (though 
there  might  be  pleasure  in  delusion),  for  since  I  am 
doomed  to  be  unhappy,  I  will  have  no  feelings  incon- 
sistent with  my  lot." 

The  violent  and  wretched  tone  of  the  Letters 
culminates  in  the  third,  which  is  unsurpassed  as  a  revela- 
tion of  the  ingenious  self-torture  of  a  sensitive  mind 
brooding  upon  its  own  despair.  The  women  of  Paris 
were  astonished  to  read  such  pages  as  the  following, 
where  complex  emotions  which  they  had  often  ex- 
perienced or  imagined,  but  had  never  been  able  to 
formulate,  suddenly  found  perfectly  direct  and  limpid 
expression  : — 

"  I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  wish  that  you  may  no 
longer  be  thinking  about  me;  and,  indeed,  to  speak 
sincerely,  I  am  furiously  jealous  of  whatever  may  give 
you  happiness,  and  of  all  that  may  touch  your  heart 
and  your  tastes  in  France.  I  do  not  know  why  I  write 
to  you.  I  see  well  enough  that  you  will  only  pity  me, 
and  I  do  not  wish  for  your  pity.  I  am  very  angry  with 
myself  when  I  reflect  upon  all  that  I  have  sacrificed  for 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  79 

you.  I  have  exposed  myself  to  the  rage  of  my  relatives, 
to  the  severity  of  the  laws  of  this  country  against  nuns, 
and  to  your  ingratitude,  which  appears  to  me  the  greatest 
of  all  misfortunes.  Yet,  all  the  while,  I  am  conscious 
that  my  remorse  is  not  sincere,  and  that  for  the  love  of 
you  I  would  with  all  my  heart  run  into  far  greater  dangers 
than  any  of  these." 

The  extraordinary  and  at  that  time  the  unique  merit 
of  the  Portuguese  Nun,  as  a  letter-writer,  Hes  in  the  fact 
that,  in  the  full  tempest  and  turmoil  of  her  passion, 
she  never  yields  to  the  temptation  of  giving  herself  up 
to  rhetoric,  or  rather  that  whenever  she  does  make  a 
momentary  concession  to  this  habit  of  her  age,  she 
doubles  on  herself  immediately,  and  is  the  first  to 
deprecate  such  false  flowers  of  speech.  She  knows  that 
her  letters  are  too  long,  although  she  cannot  keep  them 
within  bounds.  It  is  part  of  the  torture  of  her  spirit 
that  she  recognises  better  than  any  monitor  from  without 
could  teach  her,  that  her  lamentations,  reproaches,  and 
entreaties  are  as  little  calculated  as  a  material  flood  of 
tears  would  be  to  revive  the  fire  upon  a  hearth  of  sunken 
embers.  As  she  clamours  at  the  door  of  memory,  and 
makes  the  air  resound  with  her  importunity,  she  is  sane 
enough  to  be  aware  all  the  while  that  these  are  no 
seductions  by  which  a  weary  heart  may  be  refreshed 
and  re-awakened;  yet  is  she  absolutely  powerless  to 
moderate  her  own  emotion.  The  result  is  poignant  to 
the  last  degree ;  and  from  the  absence  of  all,  or  almost 
all,  surrounding  local  colour  of  incident  or  tradition,  the 
spectacle  of  this  distress  moves  and  excites  the  reader 
in  somewhat  the  same  fashion  as  the  loud  cr3dng  of  an 
unseen  figure  out-of-doors  in  the  darkness  of  the  night 
may  move  the  helpless  sympathy  of  one  who  listens 
from  a  window. 


8o  French  Profiles 

Nothing  more  is  known  of  this  shadowy  Mariana 
Alcaforada,  but  the  author  of  her  misfortunes  figures 
long  and  gloriously  in  French  history.  His  fatuity,  if 
not  his  heartlessness,  in  allowing  her  letters  to  be 
immediately  printed,  is  a  blot  upon  his  humanity  in 
our  eyes,  but  seems  to  have  abated  his  magnificence  not 
a  whit  among  his  contemporaries.  It  would  be  idle  to 
inquire  by  what  means  the  letters  came  into  the  hands 
of  a  publisher.  In  1690,  upon  the  death  of  the  trans- 
lator, it  was  admitted  that  they  had  been  turned  out  of 
Portuguese  into  excellent  French  by  Pierre  Girardin  de 
Guilleragues,  a  "  Gascon  gourmand,"  as  Saint-Simon 
calls  him,  immortalised  moreover  by  Boileau,  in  a 
graceful  couplet,  as  being — 

"  Bom  master  of  all  arts  a  court  can  teach. 
And  skilled  alike  in  silence  and  in  speech." 

It  was  Guilleragues  who  said  of  Pelisson  that  "  he 
abused  the  permission  that  men  have  to  be  ugly."  He 
was  patronised  by  Madame  de  Maintenon  and  died 
French  ambassador  to  the  Porte  in  1689.  To  Guiller- 
agues is  attributed  the  composition  of  the  Portuguese 
Letters  by  those  who  seek  to  deny  that  Mariana  Alca- 
forada ever  existed.  But  in  their  own  day  no  one 
doubted  that  the  actors  in  this  little  drama  were  real 
persons.  Chamilly  is  described  by  Saint-Simon  as  a 
tall,  heavy  man,  extremely  good-natured  and  gallant 
in  fight,  although  to  Hsten  to  and  to  look  at,  giving  little 
suggestion  that  he  could  ever  have  inspired  so  romantic 
a  passion  as  that  revealed  by  the  Portuguese  Letters. 
To  this  there  is  an  obvious  reply,  that  Saint-Simon  only 
knew  Chamilly  in  his  mature  years,  and  that  there  is  no 
reason  why  a  heavy  dragoon  should  not  have  been  very 
attractive  to  a  Portuguese  maiden  at  twenty-six  and  yet 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  8 1 

seem  most  unattractive  at  forty-six  to  the  wittiest  of 
memoir-writers.  To  the  Portuguese  nun  he  undoubtedly 
behaved  disgracefully  ill,  and  not  at  all  like  a  Christian 
gentleman;  but  we  must  remember  that  his  own  age 
judged  such  bad  deeds  as  peccadillos  in  the  free  campaign 
of  love  and  war.  Chamilly's  subsequent  career  was 
unquestionably  glorious.  He  fought  the  Turks  in 
Candia,  he  commanded  the  troops  of  the  Electors  of 
Cologne  and  of  Munster,  he  won  deathless  laurels  at  the 
famous  siege  of  Grave;  and,  finally,  after  twenty-five 
campaigns,  he  ended  as  Marshal  of  France,  and  married 
a  wife  who  was,  as  we  may  smile  maliciously  to  read  in 
our  Saint-Simon,  "  singularly  ugly." 

The  success  of  the  Portuguese  Letters  was  attested  not 
merely  by  the  multitude  of  successive  editions  of  the 
text,  but  by  the  imitations  and  continuations  which 
were  foisted  upon  a  credulous  public.  Only  seven 
months  after  the  original  publication  there  appeared  a 
second  part  containing  seven  letters,  with  the  same  date, 
1669,  on  the  title-page.  These  did  not,  however, 
pretend  to  be  written  by  Mariana,  but  by  a  Portuguese 
lady  of  quahty.  The  style  was  very  different,  as  the 
pubhsher  admitted,  and  the  letters  bear  every  stamp 
of  artifice  and  fiction.  They  were,  however,  greedily 
accepted  as  genuine,  and  the  "  Dame  Portugaise  "  took 
her  place  beside  the  "  Rehgieuse."  The  temptation  to 
prolong  the  romance  was  irresistible,  and  there  was 
immediately  pubhshed  a  pamphlet  of  "  Rephes,"  five  in 
mmiber,  supposed  to  be  sent  by  the  French  officer  to 
the  Portuguese  nun  in  answer  to  each  of  her  letters. 
This  came  from  a  Parisian  press ;  but  the  idea  of  publish- 
ing the  officer's  letters  had  occurred  simultaneously  to 
a  provincial  bookseller,  and  still  in  the  same  year,  1669, 
there  appeared  at  Grenoble  a  volume  of  New  Replies, 

G 


82  French   Profiles 

six  in  number,  the  first  being  not  properly  a  reply,  but 
an  introductory  letter.  This  last  publication  openly 
professes  to  be  fiction.  The  editor  states  in  the  preface 
that  being  "  neither  a  girl,  nor  a  nun,  nor  even  perhaps 
in  love,"  he  cannot  pretend  to  express  the  sentiments  of 
the  heart  with  the  genuine  vigour  of  the  original  letters ; 
but  that,  as  Aulus  Sabinus  ventured  to  reply  to  certain 
of  the  heroic  epistles  of  Ovid,  though  with  so  little  success 
as  merely  to  heighten  the  lustre  of  those  originals,  so  he 
hopes  by  these  inventions,  and  a  mere  jeu  d'esprit,  to 
increase  the  admiration  of  readers  for  Mariana's  genuine 
correspondence.  All  this  is  very  honest  and  very 
legitimate,  but  so  eager  were  the  ladies  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  be  deluded  that  this  preface  of  the 
guileless  editor  was  taken  to  be  a  mere  mystification,  and 
the  Grenoble  New  Replies  were  swallowed  like  the  rest. 
Some  idea  of  the  popularity  of  the  Portuguese  Letters 
may  be  gained,  not  merely  from  the  vogue  of  these 
successive  imitations,  but  from  the  fact  that  M.  Eugene 
Asse,  the  latest  and  best  of  Mariana's  editors,  has 
described  no  fewer  than  sixteen  editions  of  the  Letters 
themselves,  issued  before  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  a  hst  which  would  seem  to  be  very  far  indeed 
from  being  complete. 

Rousseau  was  the  first  to  start  the  idea  that  the 
Portuguese  Letters  were  written  by  a  man.  He  went 
upon  no  external  evidence,  but  on  subtle  and  in  truth 
very  fanciful  arguments  regarding  the  point  of  view 
taken  by  the  writer.  No  one  else  has  seriously  ques- 
tioned their  authenticity,  until  quite  recently,  when 
M.  Beauvois,  a  Burgundian  antiquary,  has  endeavoured 
to  destroy  our  faith  in  the  existence  of  the  Portuguese 
nun.  This  gentleman  is  an  impassioned  admirer  of  the 
exploits  of  the  Marquis  of  Chamilly,  and  it  is  not  difficult 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  83 

to  perceive  that  his  wish  to  discredit  the  Letters  is 
due  to  his  desire  to  whitewash  the  character  of  his  hero, 
blackened  for  the  present,  at  all  events  to  modern  eyes, 
by  the  cruel  abandonment  of  this  poor  religious  lady 
in  the  Beja  convent.  This  critic  goes  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  and  allows  himself  to  speak  of  Mariana's  letters 
as  "  the  obsessions  of  a  Msenad."  Many  of  M.  Beauvois's 
acute  objections  are  met  by  the  rearrangement  of  the 
letters  which  I  have  suggested  above,  and  particularly 
by  the  fact  that  the  fourth  of  them  should  certainly 
stand  the  first.  After  a  careful  examination  of  his 
criticism,  and  particularly  in  the  hght  of  the  important 
historical  dates,  with  regard  to  Chamilly's  record  in  the 
Portuguese  war,  which  M.  Beauvois  has  himself  brought 
forward,  I  for  one  am  more  persuaded  than  ever  that 
the  outhne  of  the  story  as  we  know  it  is  true,  and  that 
the  letters,  or  something  Portuguese  which  was  very 
like  them,  were  actually  sent  after  the  rascally  belldtre 
when  he  made  his  way  back  to  France  in  1668. 

Bare  as  the  letters  are,  there  are  nevertheless  Uttle 
touches  of  detail  here  and  there,  little  inexplicable  allu- 
sions, such  as  a  real  correspondence  would  possess,  and 
such  as  no  forger  would  introduce.  It  would  be  tedious 
in  this  place  to  dwell  minutely  on  this  sort  of  evidence, 
but  a  single  example  may  be  given.  In  one  passage  the 
nun  writes,  "  Ah !  how  I  envy  the  happiness  of  Emmanuel 
and  of  Francisque.  Why  am  not  I  always  with  you,  as 
they  are  !  "  Nothing  more  is  said  of  these  beings.  We 
are  left  to  conjecture  whether  they  were  fellow-officers, 
or  servants,  or  dogs,  or  even  perhaps  parrots.  A  forger 
would  scarcely  leave  two  meaningless  names  in  the  body 
of  his  text  without  some  indication  of  his  idea.  The 
sincerity,  moreover,  of  the  style  and  sentiments  is 
extraordinary,  and  is  observed  to  great  advantage  by 


84  French  Profiles 

comparing  the  various  continuations  and  replies  with 
the  five  original  letters.  To  suppose  the  first  little 
volume  of  1669  to  be  a  deliberate  fiction  would  be  to  land 
us  in  the  more  serious  difficulty  of  discovering  in  its 
inventor  a  great  imaginative  creator  of  emotional 
romance.  The  hero-worship  of  M.  Beauvois  has  not 
convinced  me  that  Mariana  never  gazed  across  the  oUves 
and  oranges  to  Mertola,  nor  watched  the  cavalcade  of 
her  false  dragoon  file  down  into  the  gorge  of  the  Guadiana, 
The  French  critics  have  not  taken  any  interest  in  the 
influence  of  the  Portuguese  Letters  in  England.  Yet 
translations  and  imitations  of  these  letters  became  very 
numerous  in  this  country  before  the  close  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  The  earliest  version  which  I  have  been 
able  to  trace  is  that  of  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  published 
as  a  very  tiny  little  book  of  Five  Love-Letters  from  a  Nun 
to  a  Cavalier,  in  1678  (December  28,  1677).  In  a  short 
preface  to  the  reader,  the  translator  says,  "  These  five 
letters  are  here  at  your  service.  You  will  find  in  them 
the  lively  image  of  an  extravagant  and  an  unfortunate 
passion,  and  that  a  woman  may  be  flesh  and  blood  in  a 
cloister  as  well  as  in  a  palace."  This  translation  of 
L'Estrange's  went  on  being  reprinted  for  fifty  years,  and 
was  attended  on  its  successful  course  from  one  toilet  to 
another  by  a  variety  of  imitations,  the  liveliest  of  which 
is  attributed  to  the  pen  of  the  vivacious  Major  Richard- 
son Pack.  From  the  first  the  Portuguese  Letters  were 
not  presented  to  the  women  of  England  as  literature, 
but  as  models  of  sincere  letter-writing,  and  hence  they 
escaped  mention  in  our  solemn  handbooks  of  bibhography 
and  literary  history.  But  their  influence  was  extra- 
ordinary, and  by  the  time  that  the  Spectator  had  come 
into  existence,  and  Richard  Steele  was  sitting  over  his 
wine,  "  the  slave  of  beauty,"  writing  out  of  his  heart  to 


A  Nun's  Love  Letters  85 

Mary  Scurlock,  the  men  and  women  of  England  had 
learned  the  lesson  which  the  nun  of  Beja  was  betrayed 
to  teach  them,  and  they  could  say  in  plain,  straight- 
forward sentences  exactly  what  it  was  in  their  souls  to 
express  to  one  another,  without  any  sort  of  trope  or 
rhetorical  ornament. 


r 


JULES    BARBEY    D'AUREVILLY 


JULES    BARBEY   D'AUREVILLY 

Those  who  can  endure  an  excursion  into  the  backwaters 
of  hterature  may  contemplate,  neither  too  seriously  nor 
too  lengthily,  the  career  and  writings  of  Barbey  d'Aure- 
villy.  Very  obscure  in  his  youth,  he  hved  so  long,  and 
preserved  his  force  so  consistently,  that  in  his  old  age  he 
became,  if  not  quite  a  celebrity,  most  certainly  a  notor- 
iety. At  the  close  of  his  life — he  reached  his  eighty-first 
year — he  was  still  to  be  seen  walking  the  streets  or 
haunting  the  churches  of  Paris,  his  long,  sparse  hair 
fi5dng  in  the  wind,  his  fierce  eyes  flashing  about  him, 
his  hat  poised  on  the  side  of  his  head,  his  famous  lace 
frills  turned  back  over  the  cuff  of  his  coat,  his  attitude 
always  erect,  defiant,  and  formidable.  Down  to  the  winter 
of  1888  he  preserved  the  dandy  dress  of  1840,  and  never 
appeared  but  as  M.  de  Pontmartin  has  described  him, 
in  black  satin  trousers,  which  fitted  his  old  legs  like  a 
glove,  in  a  flapping,  brigand  wideawake,  in  a  velvet 
waistcoat,  which  revealed  diamond  studs  and  a  lace 
cravat,  and  in  a  wonderful  shirt  that  covered  the  most 
artful  pair  of  stays.  In  every  action,  in  every  glance, 
he  seemed  to  be  def5dng  the  natural  decay  of  years,  and  to 
be  forcing  old  age  to  forget  him  by  dint  of  spirited  and 
ceaseless  self-assertion.  He  was  himself  the  protot5rpe 
of  all  the  Brassards  and  Misnilgrands  of  his  stories,  the 
dandy  of  dandies,  the  mummied  and  immortal  beau. 

His  intellectual  condition  was  not  unlike  his  physical 
one.  He  was  a  survival — of  the  most  persistent.  The 
last,  by  far  the  last,  of  the  Romantiques  of  1835,  Barbey 

89 


90  French   Profiles 

d'Aurevilly  lived  on  into  an  age  wholly  given  over  to 
other  aims  and  ambitions,  without  changing  his  own 
ideals  by  an  iota.  He  was  to  the  great  man  who  began 
the  revival,  to  figures  like  Alfred  de  Vigny,  as  Shirley 
was  to  the  early  Elizabethans.  He  continued  the  old 
tradition,  without  resigning  a  single  habit  or  prejudice, 
until  his  mind  was  not  a  whit  less  old-fashioned  than  his 
garments.  Victor  Hugo,  who  hated  him,  is  said  to  have 
dedicated  an  unpubUshed  verse  to  his  portrait : — 

"  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  formidable  imbecile," 

But  imbecile  was  not  at  all  the  right  word.  He  was 
absurd;  he  was  outrageous;  he  had,  perhaps,  by  dint 
of  resisting  the  decrepitude  of  his  natural  powers,  become 
a  little  crazy.  But  imbeciUty  is  the  very  last  word  to 
use  of  this  mutinous,  dogged,  implacable  old  pirate  of 
letters. 

Jules   Barbey  d'Aurevilly  was  born  near  Valognes 

(the  "  V "  which  figures  in  several  of  his  stories)  on 

the  2nd  of  November  1808.  He  liked  to  represent  him- 
self as  a  scion  of  the  bluest  nobility  of  Normandy,  and 
he  communicated  to  the  makers  of  dictionaries  the  fact 
that  the  name  of  his  direct  ancestor  is  engraved  on  the 
tomb  of  WilHam  the  Conqueror.  But  some  have  said 
that  the  names  of  his  father  and  mother  were  never 
known,  and  others  (poor  d'Aurevilly  !)  have  set  him  down 
as  the  son  of  a  butcher  in  the  village  of  Saint-Sauveur- 
le-Vicomte.  While  yet  a  school-boy  in  1825,  he  pub- 
lished an  elegy  ^wa;  heros  desThermopyles,  and  dedicated 
it  to  Casimir  Delavigne.  He  was  at  college  with  Maurice 
de  Guerin,  and  quite  early  he  became  personally  ac- 
quainted with  Chateaubriand.  His  youth  seems  to  be 
wrapped  up  in  mystery ;  according  to  one  of  the  best- 
informed  of  his  biographers,  he  vanished  in  183 1,  and 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  91 

was  not  heard  of  again  until  185 1.  To  these  twenty 
years  of  alleged  disappearance,  one  or  two  remarkable 
books  of  his  are,  however,  ascribed.  So  characteristic 
a  novel  as  L' Amour  Impossible  saw  the  light  in  1841, 
and  it  appears  that  what  is  perhaps  the  most  character- 
istic of  all  his  writings,  Du  Dandyisme  et  de  Georges  Brum- 
mell,  was  written  as  early  as  1842.  In  1845  a  very  small 
edition  of  it  was  printed  by  an  admirer  of  the  name  of 
Trebutien,  to  whose  affection  d'Aurevilly  seems  to  have 
owed  his  very  existence.  It  is  strange  that  so  Uttle  is 
distinctly  known  about  a  man  who,  late  in  life,  attracted 
much  curiosity  and  attention.  He  was  a  consummate 
romancer,  and  he  liked  to  hint  that  he  was  engaged  during 
early  life  in  intrigues  of  a  corsair  description.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  he  lived,  in  great  obscurity,  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Caen,  probably  by  the  aid  of  journalism. 
Of  all  the  productions  of  his  youth,  the  only  one  which 
can  now  be  met  with  is  the  prose  poem  of  Amaidee, 
written,  I  suppose,  about  1835 ;  this  was  published  by 
M.  Paul  Bourget  as  a  curiosity  immediately  after  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly 's  death.  Judged  as  a  story,  Amaidee  is 
puerile ;  it  describes  how  to  a  certain  poet,  called  Some- 
god,  who  dwelt  on  a  lonely  cliff,  there  came  a  young  man 
altogether  wise  and  stately  named  Altai,  and  a  frail 
daughter  of  passion,  who  gives  her  name  to  the  book. 
These  three  personages  converse  in  magnificent  language, 
and,  the  visitors  presently  departing,  the  volume  closes. 
But  an  interest  attaches  to  the  fact  that  in  Somegod 
[Quelque  Dieu  !)  the  author  was  painting  a  portrait  of 
Maurice  de  Guerin,  while  the  majestic  Altai'  is  himself. 
The  conception  of  this  book  is  Ossianic ;  but  the  style 
is  often  singularly  beautiful,  with  a  marmoreal  splendour 
founded  on  a  study  of  Chateaubriand,  and,  perhaps,  of 
Goethe,  andnot  without  relation  to  that  of  Guerin  himself. 


92  French  Profiles 

The  earliest  surviving  production  of  d'Aurevilly,  if 
we  except  Amaidee,  is  L' Amour  Impossible,  a  novel 
published  with  the  object  of  correcting  the  effects  of  the 
poisonous  Lelia  of  George  Sand.  Already,  in  the  crude 
book,  we  see  something  of  the  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  of  the 
future,  the  Dandy-Paladin,  the  CathoUc  Sensualist  or 
Diavolist,  the  author  of  the  few  poor  thoughts  and  the 
sonorous,  paroxysmal,  abundant  style.  I  forget  whether 
it  is  here  or  in  a  sUghtly  later  novel  that,  in  hastily 
turning  the  pages,  I  detect  the  sentiment,  "  Our  fore- 
fathers were  wise  to  cut  the  throats  of  the  Huguenots, 
and  very  stupid  not  to  burn  Luther."  The  late  Master 
of  Balhol  is  said  to  have  asked  a  reactionary  under- 
graduate, "  What,  Sir !  would  you  burn,  would  you 
burn  ?  "  If  he  had  put  the  question  to  Barbey  d'Aure- 
villy, the  scented  hand  would  have  been  laid  on  the 
cambric  bosom,  and  the  answer  would  have  been, 
"  Certainly  I  should."  In  the  midst  of  the  infidel 
society  and  hterature  of  the  Second  Empire,  d'Aurevilly 
persisted  in  the  most  noisy  profession  of  his  entire  loyalty 
to  Rome,  but  his  methods  of  proclaiming  his  attachment 
were  so  violent  and  outrageous  that  the  Church  showed 
no  gratitude  to  her  volunteer  defender.  This  was  a 
source  of  much  bitterness  and  recrimination,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  the  author  of  Le  Pretre  Marie  (1864) 
and  Une  Histoire  sans  Nom  (1882)  could  expect  pious 
Catholics  to  smile  on  his  very  peculiar  treatment  of 
ecclesiastical  Ufe. 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly  undertook  to  continue  the  work 
of  Chateaubriand,  and  he  gave  his  full  attention  to  a 
development  of  the  monarchical  neo-catholicism  which 
that  great  inaugurator  had  sketched  out.  He  was  im- 
pressed by  the  beauty  of  the  Roman  ceremonial,  and  he 
determined  to  express  with  poetic  emotion  the  mystical 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  93 

majesty  of  the  symbol.  It  must  be  admitted  that, 
although  his  work  never  suggests  any  knowledge  of  or 
sympathy  with  the  spiritual  part  of  rehgion,  he  has  a 
genuine  appreciation  of  its  externals.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  point  to  a  more  delicate  and  full  impression 
of  the  solemnity  which  attends  the  crepuscular  light 
of  a  church  at  vespers  than  is  given  in  the  opening  pages 
of  A  un  Diner  d' Athees.  In  L'Ensorcelee  {1854),  too,  we 
find  the  author  piously  following  a  chanting  procession 
round  a  church,  and  ejaculating,  "  Rien  n'est  beau 
comme  cet  instant  solennel  des  ceremonies  cathohques." 
Almost  every  one  of  his  novels  deals  by  preference  with 
ecclesiastical  subjects,  or  introduces  some  powerful 
figure  of  a  priest.  But  it  is  very  difficult  to  believe  that 
his  interest  in  it  all  is  other  than  histrionic  or  phenomenal. 
He  likes  the  business  of  a  priest,  he  likes  the  furniture 
of  a  church,  but  there,  in  spite  of  his  vehement  protesta- 
tions, his  piety  seems  to  a  candid  reader  to  have  begun 
and  ended. 

For  a  humble  and  reverent  child  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  it  must  be  confessed  that  Barbey  d'Aurevilly 
takes  strange  Uberties.  The  mother  would  seem  to 
have  had  little  control  over  the  caprices  of  her  extremely 
unruly  son.  There  is  scarcely  one  of  these  ultra-cathohc 
novels  of  his  which  it  is  conceivable  that  a  pious  family 
would  like  to  see  lying  upon  its  parlour  table.  The  Devil 
takes  a  prominent  part  in  many  of  them,  for  d'Aurevilly 's 
whim  is  to  see  Satanism  everywhere,  and  to  consider  it 
matter  of  mirth;  he  is  like  a  naughty  boy,  gigghng 
when  a  rude  man  breaks  his  mother's  crockery.  He 
loves  to  play  with  dangerous  and  forbidden  notions. 
In  Le  Pretre  Marie  (which,  to  his  lofty  indignation, 
was  forbidden  to  be  sold  in  Catholic  shops)  the  hero 
is  a  renegade  and  incestuous  priest,  who  loves  his  own 


94  French  Profiles 

daughter,  and  makes  a  hypocritical  confession  of  error 
in  order  that,  by  that  act  of  perjury,  he  may  save  her 
hfe,  as  she  is  dying  of  the  agony  of  knowing  him  to  be 
an  atheist.  This  man,  the  Abbe  Sombreval,  is  bewitched, 
is  possessed  of  the  Devil,  and  so  is  Ryno  de  Marigny  in 
Une  Vieille  Maitresse,  and  Lasthenie  de  Ferjol  in  Une 
Histoire  sans  Norn.  This  is  one  of  Barbey  d'Aurevilly's 
favourite  tricks,  to  paint  an  extraordinary,  an  abnormal 
condition  of  spirit,  and  to  avoid  the  psychological 
difficulty  by  simply  attributing  it  to  sorcery.  But  he 
is  all  the  time  rather  amused  by  the  wickedness  than 
shocked  at  it.  In  Le  Bonheur  dans  le  Crime — the  moral 
of  which  is  that  people  of  a  certain  grandeur  of  tempera- 
ment can  be  absolutely  wicked  with  impunity — he 
frankly  confesses  his  partiality  for  "  la  plaisanterie 
legerement  sacrilege,"  and  aU  the  philosophy  of  d'Aure- 
villy  is  revealed  in  that  rash  phrase.  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
a  wounded  conscience  expressing  itself  with  a  brutal 
fervour,  but  the  gusto  of  conscious  wickedness.  His 
mind  is  intimately  akin  with  that  of  the  Neapolitan  lady, 
whose  story  he  was  perhaps  the  first  to  tell,  who  wished 
that  it  only  were  a  sin  to  drink  iced  sherbet.  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly  is  a  devil  who  may  or  may  not  believe,  but 
who  always  makes  a  point  of  trembling. 

The  most  interesting  feature  of  Barbey  d'Aurevilly's 
temperament,  as  revealed  in  his  imaginative  work,  is, 
however,  his  preoccupation  with  his  own  physical  life. 
In  his  youth,  Byron  and  Alfieri  were  the  objects  of  his 
deepest  idolatry;  he  envied  their  disdainful  splendour 
of  passion ;  and  he  fashioned  his  dream  in  poverty  and 
obscurity  so  as  to  make  himself  believe  that  he  was  of 
their  race.  He  was  a  Disraeh — with  whom,  indeed,  he 
has  certain  relations  of  style — but  with  none  of  Disraeh's 
social  advantages,  and  with  a  more  inconsequent  and 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  95 

violent  habit  of  imagination.  Unable,  from  want  of 
wealth  and  position,  to  carry  his  dreams  into  effect, 
they  became  exasperated  and  intensified,  and  at  an 
age  when  the  real  dandy  is  setthng  down  into  a  man  of 
the  world,  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  was  spreading  the  wings 
of  his  fancy  into  the  infinite  azure  of  imaginary  experi- 
ence. He  had  convinced  himself  that  he  was  a  Lovelace, 
a  Lauzun,  a  Brummell,  and  the  philosophy  of  dandyism 
filled  his  thoughts  far  more  than  if  he  had  really  been 
able  to  spend  a  stormy  youth  among  marchionesses  who 
carried,  set  in  diamonds  in  a  bracelet,  the  ends  of  the 
moustaches  of  viscounts.  In  the  novels  of  his  maturity 
and  his  old  age,  therefore,  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  loved  to 
introduce  magnificent  aged  dandies,  whose  fatuity  he 
dwelt  upon  with  ecstasy,  and  in  whom  there  is  no  question 
that  he  saw  reflections  of  his  imaginary  self.  No  better 
type  of  this  can  be  found  than  that  Vicomte  de  Brassard, 
an  elaborate,  almost  enamoured,  portrait  of  whom 
fills  the  earlier  pages  of  what  is  else  a  rather  dull  story, 
Le  Rideau  Cramoisi.  The  very  clever,  very  immoral 
tale  called  Le  Plus  Bel  Amour  de  Don  Juan — ^which 
relates  how  a  superannuated  but  still  incredibly  vigorous 
old  beau  gives  a  supper  to  the  beautiful  women  of  quality 
whom  he  has  known,  and  recounts  to  them  the  most 
piquant  adventure  of  his  life — is  redolent  of  this  intense 
dehght  in  the  prolongation  of  enjoyment  by  sheer  refusal 
to  admit  the  ravages  of  age.  Although  my  space  forbids 
quotation,  I  cannot  resist  repeating  a  passage  which 
illustrates  this  horrible  fear  of  the  loss  of  youth  and  the 
struggle  against  it,  more  especially  as  it  is  a  good  ex- 
ample of  d'Aurevilly's  surcharged  and  intrepid  style : — 
"  II  n'y  avait  pas  \k  de  ces  jeunesses  vert  tendre,  de 
ces  petites  demoiselles  qu'execrait  Byron,  qui  sentent 
la  tartelette  et  qui,  par  la  toumure,  ne  sont  encore  que 


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des  epluchettes,  mais  tous  etes  splendides  et  savoureux, 
plantureux  automnes,  epanouissements  et  plenitudes, 
seins  ^blouissants  battant  leur  plein  majestueux  au  bord 
decouvert  des  corsages,  et,  sous  les  camees  de  I'epaule  nue, 
des  bras  de  tout  galbe,  mais  surtout  des  bras  puissants, 
de  ces  biceps  de  Sabines  qui  ont  lutte  avec  les  Romains, 
et  qui  seraient  capables  de  s'entrelacer,  pour  I'arreter, 
dans  les  rayons  de  la  roue  du  char  de  la  vie." 

This  obsession  of  vanishing  youth,  this  intense  deter- 
mination to  preserve  the  semblance  and  colour  of  vitality, 
in  spite  of  the  passage  of  years,  is,  however,  seen  to 
greatest  advantage  in  a  very  curious  book  of  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly's,  in  some  aspects,  indeed,  the  most  curious 
which  he  has  left  behind  him,  Du  Dandy isme  et  de  Georges 
Brummell.  This  is  really  a  work  of  his  early  maturity, 
for,  as  I  have  said,  it  was  printed  so  long  ago  as 
1845.  It  was  not  pubhshed,  however,  until  1861,  when 
it  may  be  said  to  have  introduced  its  author  to  the 
world  of  France.  Later  on  he  wrote  a  curious  study  of 
the  fascination  exercised  over  La  Grande  Mademoiselle 
by  Lauzun,  Un  Dandy  d'avant  les  Dandys,  and  these  two 
are  now  published  in  one  volume,  which  forms  that 
section  of  the  immense  work  of  d'Aurevilly  which  best 
rewards  the  curious  reader. 

Many  writers  in  England,  from  Thomas  Carlyle  in 
Sartor  Resartus  to  our  ingenious  young  forger  of  para- 
doxes, Mr.  Max  Beerbohm,  have  dealt  upon  that  semi- 
feminine  passion  in  fatuity,  that  sublime  attention  to 
costume  and  deportment,  which  marks  the  dandy.  The 
type  has  been,  as  d'Aurevilly  does  not  fail  to  observe, 
mainly  an  English  one.  We  point  to  Beau  Nash,  to 
Byron,  to  Lord  Yarmouth,  to  Sheridan,  and,  above  all, 
"  k  ce  Dandy  royal,  S.  M.  Georges  IV. ;  "  but  the  star 
of  each  of  these  must  pale  before  that  of  Brummell. 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  97 

These  others,  as  was  said  in  a  different  matter,  had 
"  other  preoccupations,"  but  Brummell  was  entirely 
absorbed,  as  by  a  solemn  mission,  by  the  conduct  of 
his  person  and  his  clothes.  So  far,  in  the  portraiture 
of  such  a  figure,  there  is  nothing  very  singular  in  what 
the  French  noveUst  has  skilfully  and  nimbly  done,  but 
it  is  his  own  attitude  which  is  so  original.  All  other 
writers  on  the  dandies  have  had  their  tongues  in  their 
cheeks.  If  they  have  commended,  it  is  because  to  be 
preposterous  is  to  be  amusing.  When  we  read  that 
"  dandyism  is  the  least  selfish  of  all  the  arts,"  we  smile, 
for  we  know  that  the  author's  design  is  to  be  entertaining. 
But  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  is  doggedly  in  earnest.  He 
loves  the  great  dandies  of  the  past  as  other  men  contem- 
plate with  ardour  dead  poets  and  dead  musicians.  He 
is  seriously  enamoured  of  their  mode  of  life.  He  sees 
nothing  ridiculous,  nothing  even  Hmited,  in  their  self- 
concentration.  It  reminds  him  of  the  tiger  and  of  the 
condor;  it  recalls  to  his  imagination  the  vast,  solitary 
forces  of  Nature;  and  when  he  contemplates  Beau 
Brummell,  his  eyes  fill  with  tears  of  nostalgia.  So  would 
he  have  desired  to  live ;  thus,  and  not  otherwise,  would 
he  fain  have  strutted  and  trampled  through  that 
eighteenth  century  to  which  he  is  for  ever  gazing  back 
with  a  fond  regret.  "  To  dress  one's  self,"  he  says, 
"  should  be  the  main  business  of  life,"  and  with  great 
ingenuity  he  dwells  upon  the  latent  but  positive  influence 
which  dress  has  had  on  men  of  a  nature  apparently 
furthest  removed  from  its  trivialities;  upon  Pascal, 
for  instance,  upon  Buffon,  upon  Wagner. 

It  was  natural  that  a  writer  who  delighted  in  this 

patrician  ideal  of  conquering  man  should  have  a  limited 

conception  of  life.     Women  to  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  were 

of  two  varieties — either  nuns  or  amorous  tigresses ;    they 

H 


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were  sometimes  both  in  one.  He  had  no  idea  of  soft 
gradations  in  society :  there  were  the  tempestuous 
marchioness  and  her  intriguing  maid  on  one  side;  on 
the  other,  emptiness,  the  sordid  hovels  of  the  bourgeoisie. 
This  absence  of  observation  or  recognition  of  Hfe  d'Aure- 
villy  shared  with  the  other  Romantiques,  but  in  his 
sinister  and  contemptuous  aristocracy  he  passed  beyond 
them  all.  Had  he  lived  to  become  acquainted  with  the 
writings  of  Nietzsche,  he  would  have  hailed  a  brother- 
spirit,  one  who  loathed  democracy  and  the  humanitarian 
temper  as  much  as  he  did  himself.  But  there  is  no 
philosophy  in  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  nothing  but  a  preju- 
dice fostered  and  a  sentiment  indulged. 

In  referring  to  Nicholas  Nickleby,  a  novel  which  he 
vainly  endeavoured  to  get  through,  d'Aurevilly  remarks  : 
"  I  wish  to  write  an  essay  on  Dickens,  and  at  present 
I  have  only  read  one  hundred  pages  of  his  writings.  But 
I  consider  that  if  one  hundred  pages  do  not  give  the  talent 
of  a  man,  they  give  his  spirit,  and  the  spirit  of  Dickens 
is  odious  to  me."  "  The  vulgar  Dickens,"  he  calmly 
remarks  in  Journalistes  et  Polemistes,  and  we  laugh 
at  the  idea  of  sweeping  away  such  a  record  of  genius 
on  the  strength  of  a  chapter  or  two  misread  in  Nicholas 
Nickleby.  But  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  was  not  Dickens, 
and  it  really  is  not  necessary  to  study  closely  the  vast 
body  of  his  writings.  The  same  characteristics  recur  in 
them  all,  and  the  impression  may  easily  be  weakened 
by  vain  repetition.  In  particular,  a  great  part  of  the 
later  life  of  d'Aurevilly  was  occupied  in  writing 
critical  notices  and  studies  for  newspapers  and  re- 
views. He  made  this,  I  suppose,  his  principal  source 
of  income;  and  from  the  moment  when,  in  1851,  he 
became  literary  critic  to  Le  Pays  to  that  of  his  death, 
nearly  forty  years  later,  he  was  incessantly  dogmatising 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  99 

about  literature  and  art.  He  never  became  a  critical 
force,  he  was  too  violent  and,  indeed,  too  empty  for  that ; 
but  a  pen  so  brilliant  as  his  is  always  welcome  with  editors 
whose  design  is  not  to  be  true,  but  to  be  noticeable,  and 
to  escape  "  the  obvious."  The  most  cruel  of  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly 's  enemies  could  not  charge  his  criticism 
with  being  obvious.  It  is  intensely  contentious  and 
contradictory.  It  treats  all  writers  and  artists  on  the 
accepted  nursery  principle  of  "  Go  and  see  what  baby's 
doing,  and  tell  him  not  to."  This  is  entertaining  for  a 
moment ;  and  if  the  shower  of  abuse  is  spread  broadly 
enough,  some  of  it  must  come  down  on  shoulders  that 
deserve  it.  But  the  "  slashing  "  review  of  yester-year 
is  dismal  reading,  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  library  of 
reprinted  criticism  to  which  d'Aurevilly  gave  the  general 
title  of  LesCEuvres  etlesHommes  (1861-65)  is  very  enticing. 
He  had  a  great  contempt  for  Goethe  and  for  Sainte- 
Beuve,  in  whom  he  saw  false  priests  constantly  leading 
the  pubUc  away  from  the  true  principle  of  literary  ex- 
pression, "  le  couronnement,  la  gloire  et  la  force  de  toute 
critique,  que  je  cherche  en  vain."  A  very  ingenious 
writer,  M.  Ernest  Tissot,  has  paid  Barbey  d'Aurevilly 
the  compliment  of  taking  him  seriously  in  this  matter, 
and  has  written  an  elaborate  study  on  what  his  criierium 
was.  But  this  is,  perhaps,  to  inquire  too  kindly.  I 
doubt  whether  he  sought  with  any  very  sincere  expecta- 
tion of  finding;  like  the  Persian  sage,  "  he  swore,  but 
was  he  sober  when  he  swore  ?  "  Was  he  not  rather 
intoxicated  with  his  self-encouraged  romantic  exaspera- 
tion, and  determined  to  be  fierce,  independent,  and  un- 
compromising at  all  hazards  ?  Such  are,  at  all  events, 
the  doubts  awakened  by  his  indignant  diatribes,  which 
once  amused  Paris  so  much,  and  now  influence  no  living 
creature.     Some  of  his  dicta,  in  their  showy  way,  are 


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forcible,  "  La  critique  a  pour  blason  la  croix,  la  balance 
et  la  glaive ;  "  that  is  a  capital  phrase  on  the  lips  of  a 
reviewer,  who  makes  himself  the  appointed  Catholic 
censor  of  worldly  letters,  and  is  willing  to  assume  at 
once  the  cross,  the  scales,  and  the  sword.  More  of  the 
hoof  peeps  out  in  this  :  "  La  critique,  c'est  une  intrepidity 
de  I'esprit  et  du  caractere."  To  a  nature  like  that  of 
d'Aurevilly,  the  distinction  between  intrepidity  and 
arrogance  is  never  clearly  defined. 

It  is,  after  all,  in  his  novels  that  Barbey  d'Aurevilly 
displays  his  talent  in  its  most  interesting  form.  His 
powers  developed  late;  and  perhaps  the  best  con- 
structed of  all  his  tales  is  Une  Histoire  sans  Nom,  which 
dates  from  1882,  when  he  was  quite  an  old  man.  In 
this,  as  in  all  the  rest,  a  surprising  narrative  is  well, 
although  extremely  leisurely,  told,  but  without  a  trace 
of  psychology.  It  was  impossible  for  d'Aurevilly  to 
close  his  stories  effectively;  in  almost  every  case, 
the  futility  and  extravagance  of  the  last  few  pages 
destroys  the  effect  of  the  rest.  Like  the  Fat  Boy,  he 
wanted  to  make  your  flesh  creep,  to  leave  you  cataleptic 
with  horror  at  the  end,  but  he  had  none  of  Poe's  skill 
in  producing  an  effect  of  terror.  In  Le  Rideau  Cramoisi 
(which  is  considered,  I  cannot  tell  why,  one  of  his  suc- 
cesses) the  heroine  dies  at  an  embarrassing  moment, 
without  any  disease  or  cause  of  death  being  suggested — 
she  simply  dies.  But  he  is  generally  much  more  violent 
than  this;  at  the  close  of  A  un  Diner  d'Athees,  which  up 
to  a  certain  point  is  an  extremely  fine  piece  of  writing, 
the  angry  parents  pelt  one  another  with  the  mummied 
heart  of  their  only  child ;  in  Le  Dessous  des  Cartes,  the 
key  of  all  the  intrigue  is  discovered  at  last  in  the  skeleton 
of  an  infant  buried  in  a  box  of  mignonette.  If  it  is 
not  by  a  monstrous  fact,  it  is  by  an  audacious  feat  of 


Jules  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  loi 

anti-morality,  that  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  seeks  to  harrow 
and  terrify  our  imaginations.  In  Le  Bonheur  dans  le 
Crime,  Hauteclaire  Stassin,  the  woman-fencer,  and  the 
Count  of  Savigny,  pursue  their  wild  intrigue  and  murder 
the  Countess  slowly,  and  then  marry  each  other,  and 
live,  with  youth  far  prolonged  (d'Aurevilly's  special  idea 
of  divine  blessing),  without  a  pang  of  remorse,  without  a 
crumpled  rose-leaf  in  their  fehcity,  like  two  magnificent 
plants  spreading  in  the  violent  moisture  of  a  tropical 
forest. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  as  a  writer,  pure  and  simple,  that 
Barbey  d'Aurevilly  claims  most  attention.  His  style, 
which  Paul  de  Saint- Victor  (quite  in  his  own  spirit) 
described  as  a  mixture  of  tiger's  blood  and  honey,  is  full 
of  extravagant  beauty.  He  has  a  strange  intensity,  a 
sensual  and  fantastic  force,  in  his  torrent  of  intertwined 
sentences  and  preposterous  exclamations.  The  volume 
called  Les  Diaholiques,  which  contains  a  group  of  his  most 
characteristic  stories,  pubhshed  in  1874,  may  be  recom- 
mended to  those  who  wish,  in  a  single  example,  compen- 
diously to  test  the  quahty  of  Barbey  d'Aurevilly.  He 
has  a  curious  love  of  punning,  not  for  purposes  of  humour, 
but  to  intensify  his  style  :  "  Quel  oubli  et  quelle  oubU- 
ette  "  [Le  Dessous  des  Cartes),  "  boudoir  fleur  de  pecher 
ou  de  peche  "  (Le  Phis  hel  Amour),  "  renoncer  a  I'amour 
malpropre,  mais  jamais  a  I'amour  propre  "  {A  un  Diner 
d'Athees).  He  has  audacious  phrases  which  linger  in  the 
memory  :  "  Le  Profil,  c'est  I'ecueil  de  la  beaute  "  {Le 
Bonheur  dans  le  Crime) ;  "  Les  verres  a  champagne 
de  France,  un  lotus  qui  faisait  [les  Anglais]  oublier  les 
sombres  et  rehgieuses  habitudes  de  la  patrie;  "  "  Elle 
avait  I'air  de  monter  vers  Dieu,  las  mains  toutes  pleines 
de  bonnes  ceuvres  "  {Memoranda). 

That  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  will  take  any  prominent 


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place  in  the  history  of  literature  is  improbable.  He 
was  a  curiosity,  a  droll,  obstinate  survival.  We  like 
to  think  of  him  in  his  incredible  dress,  strolling  through 
the  streets  of  Paris,  with  his  clouded  cane  like  a  sceptre 
in  one  hand,  and  in  the  other  that  small  mirror  by  which 
every  few  minutes  he  adjusted  the  poise  of  his  cravat, 
or  the  studious  tempest  of  his  hair.  He  was  a  wonderful 
old  fop  or  beau  of  the  forties  handed  down  to  the  eighties 
in  perfect  preservation.  As  a  writer  he  was  fervid, 
sumptuous,  magnificently  puerile ;  I  have  been  told  that 
he  was  a  superb  talker,  that  his  conversation  was  like 
his  books,  a  flood  of  paradoxical,  flamboyant  rhetoric. 
He  made  a  gallant  stand  against  old  age,  he  defied  it  long 
with  success,  and  when  it  conquered  him  at  last,  he  retired 
to  his  hole  like  a  rat,  and  died  with  stoic  fortitude,  alone, 
without  a  friend  to  close  his  eyelids.  It  was  in  a  wretched 
lodging  high  up  in  a  house  in  the  Rue  Rousselet,  all  his 
finery  cast  aside,  and  three  melancholy  cats  the  sole 
mourners  by  his  body,  that  they  found,  on  an  April 
morning  of  1889,  the  ruins  of  what  had  once  been  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly. 


ALPHONSE    DAUDET 


ALPHONSE  DAUDET 

After  spending  the  summer,  as  usual,  in  his  country 
place  at  Champrosay,  Alphonse  Daudet  came  back  no 
more  to  winter  in  those  historic  rooms  in  the  Rue  de 
Belchasse  where  all  the  world  had  laid  at  his  feet  the 
tribute  of  its  homage  and  curiosity.  His  growing  in- 
firmities had  made  the  mounting  of  five  flights  of  stairs 
finally  intolerable  to  him.  He  took  an  apartment  on 
the  first  floor,  No.  41,  Rue  de  I'Universite,  which  was  far 
better  suited  to  his  condition,  and  here,  in  excellent  spirits, 
charmed  with  the  change,  and  eager  for  the  spring  to  blos- 
som in  the  surrounding  gardens,  he  was  proposing  to 
receive  his  friends  at  Christmas.  But  another  guest  long 
since  due,  but  not  at  that  moment  expected,  knocked  first 
at  the  door  of  the  still  unfinished  house.  On  the  even- 
ing of  December  16,  1897,  while  he  was  chatting  gaily 
at  the  dinner-table  in  company  with  his  wife  and  children, 
Alphonse  Daudet  uttered  a  cry  and  fell  back  in  his  chair. 
His  sons  flew  for  a  doctor,  but  in  vain ;  the  end  had  come 
— the  terrible  spectre  so  long  waited,  so  mysteriously 
dreaded  for  its  attendant  horrors  of  pain  and  intolerable 
decay,  had  appeared  alone,  and  in  the  guise  of  a  bene- 
ficent angel.  The  last  page  of  Ma  Douleur,  when  it 
comes  into  our  hands,  will  be  the  record,  by  another  voice 
than  Daudet's,  of  a  death  as  peaceful  and  as  benign  in 
all  its  circumstances  as  death  can  be. 

I 

It  is  not  possible  to  discuss  the  character  of  Alphonse 
Daudet   without   some   consideration   of   his   personal 

105 


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conditions.  In  every  page  of  his  brilliant,  variegated, 
emotional  books,  ever  trembling  into  tears  or  flashing 
into  laughter,  the  writer  is  present  to  the  mind  of  the 
instructed  reader.  Few  men  have  been  born  with  a 
keener  appetite  for  life  or  an  aptitude  for  more  intense 
enjoyment.  Daudet  was  of  the  tribe  of  those  who, 
as  Keats  says,  "  burst  joy's  grape  against  their  palate 
fine."  It  is  highly  possible  that,  with  this  temperament 
and  a  southern  habit  of  Ufe,  advancing  years  might  have 
tended  to  exaggerate  in  him  the  tumult  of  the  senses; 
he  might  have  become  a  little  gross,  a  little  noisy.  But 
fortune  willed  it  otherwise,  and  this  exquisite  hedonist, 
so  amorous  of  life  and  youth,  was  refined  and  etherealised 
by  a  mysterious  and  wasting  anguish.  It  was  about  the 
close  of  1881  that,  while  engaged  in  writing  Sapho, 
Daudet  became  conscious  of  sudden  thrills  of  agonising 
pain  in  his  limbs,  which  attacked  him  unexpectedly, 
and  lacerated  every  part  of  his  frame  in  turn.  From 
this  time  forth,  he  was  never  free  from  the  terror  of 
the  pang,  and  he  once  used  a  phrase  regarding  it,  which 
awakens  a  vision  of  Prometheus  stretched  on  Caucasus. 
"  La  souffrance,  chez  moi,"  he  said,  "  c'est  un  oiseau 
qui  se  pose  partout,  tantot  ici,  tantot  la." 

It  will  be  remembered  that  when  Daudet  pubUshed 
L' Evangeliste  in  1883,  he  dedicated  it  to  Charcot.  It 
was  that  great  master  of  diagnosis  who  detected  in  what 
the  family  physician  had  supposed  to  be  neuralgia  the 
first  symptoms  of  that  malady  of  the  spinal  cord  to 
which  the  novelist  now  slowly  succumbed.  The  ravages 
of  this  terrible  disease,  while  they  gradually  affected 
more  and  more  completely  his  powers  of  locomotion, 
spared  all  the  functions  of  the  head.  Since  the  comple- 
tion of  Sapho,  it  is  true,  there  has  been  apparent  a 
flagging  in  Daudet's  constructive  power ;    but  this  need 


Alphonse  Daudet  107 

not  be  attributed  to  disease.  In  agility  of  conversa- 
tion, in  refinement  of  style,  in  alertness  and  lucidity  of 
mind,  Daudet  showed  to  the  last  hour  no  observable 
decline.  His  courage,  on  the  other  hand,  his  heroic 
resignation  and  patience  were  qualities  that  raised  him 
to  a  sort  of  moral  sublimity.  They  would  have  done 
credit  to  the  most  placid  of  northerners,  but  as  the  orna- 
ment of  a  Provencal  in  early  middle  life,  the  blood  in 
whose  veins  was  quicksilver,  they  were  exquisite  and 
astonishing.  There  are  not  many  finer  pictures  in  the 
cabinet  of  modern  hterary  history  than  that  of  Alphonse 
Daudet  waiting  to  be  racked  with  anguish  from  moment 
to  moment,  a  shawl  wrapped  round  his  poor  knees, 
lifting  the  ivory  lines  of  his  face  with  rapture  to  the 
beauty  of  a  flower,  or  pouring  from  his  delicate  lips  a 
flood  of  wit  and  tenderness  and  enthusiasm.  It  carries 
the  thought  back  to  Scarron,  who  "  souffrit  mille  fois 
la  mort  avant  que  de  perdre  la  vie ;  "  and  the  modern 
instance,  while  no  less  brave,  is  of  a  rarer  beauty. 

These  physical  considerations  are  so  important, 
they  form  so  essential  a  part  of  our  conception  of  Daudet 
and  of  Daudet's  conception  of  literature,  that  they 
cannot  be  passed  over,  even  in  a  brief  outline  of  his  place 
in  the  world  of  writers.  He  was  not  one  of  those  who 
shrink  from  being  contemplated.  His  work  was  not 
objective  as  regarded  his  own  person,  it  was  intensely — 
one  had  almost  said  it  was  exclusively — subjective. 
Large  portions  of  his  fiction  are  nothing  more  or  less 
than  selected  autobiography,  and  he  had  no  scruple  in 
letting  this  be  perceived.  He  took  in  later  life  to  writing 
prefaces  to  his  old  novels,  explaining  the  conditions 
in  which  they  were  composed.  He  published  Trente  Ans 
de  Paris  in  1882 ;  what  it  was  not  quite  convenient  that 
he  should  narrate  himself  was  confessed  by  M.  Ernest 


io8  French   Profiles 

Daudet,  in  Mon  Frhre  et  Mot.  The  early  writings  of 
Alphonse  Daudet,  up  to  Fromont  Jeune  et  Risler  Aim  at 
least,  resolve  themselves,  it  is  plain,  into  autobiography. 
His  only  long  romance  of  the  early  period,  Le  Petit  Chose, 
begins  with  the  sentence  "  Je  suis  ne  le  13  Mai  18 — ,  dans 
une  ville  du  Languedoc."  So  speaks  the  hero,  and 
presently,  we  calculate  from  facts  recorded,  that  18 — 
stands  for  1840.  Well,  Alphonse  Daudet  was  born  at 
Nimes  on  May  31,  1840.  This  changing  of  31  into  13  is 
very  characteristic ;  an  analogous  alteration  is  often  the 
only  one  which  the  author  makes  in  turning  reality  into 
a  novel. 

The  drawback  of  such  a  practice  is  that  in  reading  the 
charming  works  of  Alphonse  Daudet's  first  thirty-five 
years,  we  are  divided  in  allegiance  between  the  artist 
and  the  man.  This  is  the  danger  of  the  autobiographical 
method  when  carried  to  so  great  an  extreme,  and  con- 
fessed so  openly.  The  poor  little  hero  of  Petit  Chose 
flying  from  his  tormentors,  comes  up  to  Paris  in  a  pair 
of  india-rubber  goloshes,  having  no  shoes,  and  the  author 
makes  very  happy  and  pathetic  use  of  this  little  incident. 
I  remember,  however,  being  much  annoyed  (I  hardly  know 
why)  by  discovering,  as  I  read  Mon  Frere  et  Moi,  that 
Alphonse  really  did  come  up  to  Paris  thus,  in  goloshes, 
but  without  shoes.  By  some  perversity  of  temper, 
I  felt  vexed  that  a  real  person  should  have  plagiarised 
from  the  invented  history  of  Petit  Chose,  and  to  this  day 
I  think  it  would  have  been  better  if  this  piece  of  per- 
sonal history  had  not  been  unveiled  by  M.  Ernest  Daudet. 
But  as  a  family  the  Daudets  are  unsurpassed  in  the 
active  way  in  which  they  take  their  musical-box  to 
pieces,  the  result  being  that  we  scarcely  know,  at  last, 
whether  the  music  was  the  primary  object,  or  was 
merely  secondary  to  the  mechanic^  ingenuity.    This 


Alphonse  Daudet  109 

is  a  doubt  which  never  enhances  our  pleasure  in  the  fine 
arts. 

The  self-consciousness  which  coloured  all  the  mani- 
festations of  the  mind  of  Alphonse  Daudet  had  much  to 
do  with  his  pathos,  his  really  very  remarkable  command 
over  our  tears.  There  is  no  recent  French  writer  with 
whom  we  weep  so  easily,  and  the  reason,  without  doubt, 
is  to  be  found  in  his  own  aptitude  for  weeping.  If  his 
nature  were  harder,  if  he  were  not  so  sorry  for  himself,  we 
should  not  be  so  sorry  for  his  creations.  The  intense 
and  sincere  sensibihty  of  Daudet  disarms  the  nerves; 
there  is  no  resisting  his  pathos.  When  he  chooses  to 
melt  his  audience  he  can  scarcely  be  heard  for  their 
sobbing.  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  think  he  sometimes 
carries  this  sensibility  to  an  illegitimate  extreme;  it 
makes,  for  instance,  a  great  part  of  Jack  too  painful  for 
endurance.  In  this  otherwise  admirable  book  the  author 
becomes  like  the  too  emotional  attorney,  Baines  Carew, 
in  the  Bah  Ballads  ;  he  seems  to  "  he  flat  upon  the  floor, 
convulsed  with  sympathetic  sob,"  until  the  reader, 
bent  on  pleasure,  "  toddles  off  next  door,"  and  gives  the 
case  to  M.  de  Maupassant  or  M.  Bourget. 

Yet  this  pathetic  sensibility,  if  occasionally  pushed 
to  excess,  has  been  one  of  the  most  vivid  of  the  qualities 
which  have  endeared  Alphonse  Daudet  to  thousands 
of  readers.  He  has  a  sense  of  the  hysterical  sadness 
of  life,  the  melancholy  which  arises  in  the  breast  without 
cause  at  some  commonplace  conjunction  of  incidents, 
the  terror  of  vague  future  ill,  the  groundless  depressions 
and  faint  forebodings  which  strike  men  and  women  like 
the  vision  of  a  spectre  at  noon-day.  Of  these  neurotic 
fallacies  Daudet  is  a  master ;  he  knows  how  to  make  us 
shudder  with  the  pictures  of  them,  as,  consummately,  in 
Avec  Trois  Mille  Cent  Francs.     Pure  melodious  pathos, 


no  French   Profiles 

produced  by  the  careful  balance  of  elements  common  to 
all  human  frailty,  and  harmonised  by  a  beautiful  balance 
of  style,  we  discover  frequently  in  the  Contes  du  Lundi, 
in  the  Alsatian  stories,  and  everywhere  in  Jack.  To  the 
last,  a  novel  in  Alphonse  Daudet's  hands  was  apt  to  be, 
what  he  calls  one  of  his  great  books,  "  un  livre  de  pitie, 
de  colere  et  d'ironie,"  and  the  irony  and  anger  were 
commonly  founded  upon  pity.  In  particular,  Le  Petit 
Chose  is  all  pity  :  the  arrival  of  the  telegram  that  the 
boy  is  afraid  to  deliver,  the  extreme  lachrymosity  of 
Jacques,  the  agony  of  the  pion  in  sound  of  the  keys  of 
M.  Viot  (a  species  of  educational  Mr.  Carker),  the  fate 
of  Mme.  Eyssette  taking  refuge  among  her  stingy  provin- 
cial relations — almost  every  incident  in  this  very  pretty 
book  is  founded  upon  the  exercise  of  shghtly  exaggerated 
sensibility.  The  author's  voice  trembles  as  he  tells 
the  tale;  when  he  laughs,  as  every  now  and  then  he 
does  so  gaily,  we  give  a  sigh  of  relief,  for  we  were  begin- 
ning to  fear  that  he  would  break  down  altogether. 

II 

From  this  dangerous  faciUty  in  telling  a  tale  of  tears 
about  himself  Alphonse  Daudet  was  delivered  by  develop- 
ing a  really  marvellous  talent  for  expatiating  on  the 
external  and  decorative  side  of  life.  Out  of  the  wreckage 
of  his  experimental  writings  he  has  saved  for  us  the 
Lettres  de  mon  Moulin  and  the  Contes  Choisis  which 
contain,  with  Le  Petit  Chose,  all  that  needs  trouble  the 
general  reader,  although  the  amateur  of  literature 
examines  with  interest  (and  finds  entirely  Daudesque) 
those  early  volumes  of  verse,  Les  Amoureuses,  of  1858,  and 
La  Double  Conversion  of  1861 .  But  Lettres  de  mon  Moulin 
{1869)  is  the  one  youthful  book  of  A.  Daudet  which  the 
most  hurried  student  of  modern  French  literature  cannot 


Alphonse  Daudet  1 1 1 

afford  to  overlook.  In  its  own  way,  and  at  its  best, 
there  is  simply  nothing  that  surpasses  it.  A  short  story 
of  mediaeval  court  life  better  than  La  Mule  du  Pape 
has  not  been  told.  It  is  not  possible  to  point  to  an 
idyll  of  pastoral  adventure  of  the  meditative  class  more 
classic  in  its  graceful  purity  than  Les  J^ioiles.  As  a 
masterpiece  of  picturesque  and  ironic  study  of  the  life 
of  elderly  persons  in  a  village,  Les  Vieux  stands  where 
Cranford  stands,  since  sheer  perfection  knows  neither 
first  nor  last.  There  are  Corsican  and  Algerian  sketches 
in  this  incomparable  volume;  but  those  which  rise  to 
the  memory  first,  and  are  most  thoroughly  characteristic, 
are  surely  those  which  deal  with  country  life  and  legend 
in  the  dreamy  heart  of  Provence.  "  Dance  and 
Provencal  song  and  sunburnt  mirth  " — that  is  what  we 
recall  when  we  think  of  the  Lettres  de  mon  Moulin. 

From  his  ruined  mill  at  Fortvielle,  "  situated  in  the 
valley  of  the  Rhone,  in  the  very  heart  of  Provence,  on  a 
hillside  clothed  with  pine-trees  and  green  oaks,  the  said 
mill,  deserted  for  more  than  twenty  years  and  incapable 
of  grinding,  as  appeareth  from  the  wild  vines,  mosses, 
rosemaries,  and  other  parasitic  growths  which  climb 
to  the  ends  of  its  sails,"  from  this  mill,  honourably 
leased  at  Pamperigouste,  in  presence  of  two  witnesses. 
Francet  Mamai,  fife-player,  and  Louiset,  called  Le  Quique, 
cross-bearer  to  the  White  Penitents,  Alphonse  Daudet 
writes  to  his  friends,  or  records  a  story,  as  the  whim 
takes  him.  He  recounts  legends  that  illustrate  the  habits 
and  prejudices  of  the  folks  around.  He  visits  the  poet 
Mistral,  he  accompanies  local  sportsmen  on  their  walks, 
he  spends  his  nights  with  the  customs  officers.  Some- 
times, to  gain  intenser  naivete,  to  get  closer  still  to  the 
heart  of  things,  he  borrows  the  voice  of  a  goat,  of  a 
partridge,  of  a  butterfly.     And  the  main  object  of  it  all 


112  French   Profiles 

is  to  render  the  external  impression  of  this  Provencal  hfe 
more  deUcately,  more  radiantly,  more  intimately  than 
has  ever  been  done  before. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  analyse  the  skill  with  which 
Daudet  contrives  to  produce  this  sense  of  real  things 
seen  intensely  through  the  bright-coloured  atmosphere 
of  his  talent.  His  economy  of  words  in  the  best  examples 
of  this  branch  of  his  work  is  notable.  The  curious 
reader  of  his  little  story,  "  The  Beacon  of  the  Bloody 
Isles,"  may  ask  himself  how  it  would  be  possible  to 
enhance  the  mysterious  dazzlement  caused  by  the 
emerging  of  the  writer  from  the  dark  winding  stairs  up 
into  the  blaze  of  light  exhibited  above  : — 

"En  entrant  j'etais  ebloui.  Ces  cuivres,  ces  etains, 
ces  reflecteurs  de  metal  blanc,  ces  murs  de  cristal  bomb6 
qui  tournaient  avec  des  grands  cercles  bleuatres,  tout 
ce  miroitement,  tout  ce  cliquetis  de  lumieres,  me  donnait 
un  moment  de  vertige." 

What  could  be  more  masterly  than  that  ?  It  is 
said  in  the  fewest  possible  words,  yet  so  that  an  im- 
pression, in  a  high  degree  bewildering  and  complex,  is 
accurately  presented  to  us.  Scarcely  less  marvellous 
is  the  interior,  in  Les  Vieux,  where,  under  the  miraculous 
influence  of  the  Life  of  St.  Irenseus,  read  aloud  by  a  little 
pensioner  in  a  blue  blouse,  not  the  old  gentleman  and 
lady  only,  but  the  canaries  in  their  cage,  the  flies  on 
the  pane,  and  all  the  other  elements  of  still  life  are 
plunged  in  deepest  sleep  at  noon.  And  of  the  fantasia 
about  Valencia  oranges  in  the  winter  streets  of  Paris, 
and  of  the  scene  in  "  The  Two  Inns,"  which  every  one 
has  praised,  and  of  the  description  of  the  phantom 
visitors  who  come  uninvited  to  supper  with  M.  Majeste, 
and  of  the  series  of  idylUc  vignettes  "  en  Camargue," 
what   shall   be    said  ? — the  enumeration   of   Alphonse 


Alphonse  Daudet  113 

Daudet's  successes  in  this  direction  becomes  a  mere 
catalogue.  It  is  particularly  to  be  observed  that  with 
his  incessant  verbal  invention,  we  are  conscious  of  no 
strain  after  effect.  Daudet  is  never  pretentious,  and 
it  requires  some  concentration  of  mind,  some  going 
backward  over  the  steps  of  his  sentences,  to  perceive 
what  a  magic  of  continual  buoyancy  it  is  that  has  carried 
us  along  with  so  swift  a  precision. 

When  Alphonse  Daudet  began  to  write  in  Paris,  a  new 
set  of  critical  ideas  and  creative  aspirations  were  setting 
the  young  men  in  motion.  In  poetry,  the  example  of 
Baudelaire  in  noting  impressions,  and  in  widening  the 
artistic  repertory,  was  having  an  electrical  influence, 
while  Daudet  and  Zola,  in  conjunction  with  those  elder 
brethren  of  theirs,  Flaubert  and  the  Goncourts,  were 
endeavouring  to  make  of  the  practice  of  novel-writing 
something  more  solid,  brilliant,  and  exact  than  had  been 
attempted  before.  This  is  no  place  to  touch  on  what 
will  eventually  occupy  the  historian  of  literature, 
Alphonse  Daudet's  place  in  the  ranks  of  the  naturalists. 
But  it  is  important  to  note  that  he  possessed  one  quality 
denied  to  his  distinguished  friends,  denied  even  to 
Flaubert,  namely,  his  graceful  rapidity.  As  M.  Jules 
Claretie  said  of  him  the  other  day,  he  was  "  un  r^aliste 
aile,"  and  he  was  preserved  from  the  dulness  and  pedes- 
trian jog-trot  of  prosy  naturalism  by  this  winged  light- 
ness of  his,  this  agility  in  sensation,  and  illuminating 
promptitude  in  expression.  His  hand  was  always  light, 
among  the  tribe  of  those  who  never  knew  when  to  stop. 
Daudet  could  not  fall  into  the  error  of  Zola  in  his  "  sym- 
phonies of  odours,"  nor  destroy  the  vitality  of  a  study 
like  Cherie,  as  Edmond  de  Goncourt  did,  by  the  pedantic 
superfetation  of  docimientary  evidence.  He  was  a 
creature  of  the  sun  and  wind,  like  the  cicala  that  the 
I 


114  French  Profiles 

Greek  poets  sung  of,  intoxicated  with  a  dew-drop,  and 
flinging  itself  impetuously  into  the  air,  while  it  struck 
melody  from  its  wings  with  its  own  flying  feet. 

Ill 

Thus  palpitating  with  observation,  thus,  as  he  himself 
said,  "  hypnotise  par  la  realite,"  filled  to  the  brim  of 
his  quivering  nature  by  the  twin  sources  of  pictorial 
and  of  moral  sensitiveness,  seeing  and  feeling  with  almost 
abnormal  intensity,  his  sails  puffed  out  with  the  pride 
of  life  and  the  glory  of  visual  sensation,  Daudet  prepared 
himself  by  a  myriad  experiments  for  the  true  business 
of  his  career.  After  a  somewhat  lengthy  and  arduous 
apprenticeship  as  an  observer  of  nature  and  of  himself, 
armed  with  those  little  green  books  of  notes,  those 
cahiers  of  which  we  have  heard  so  much,  he  set  out  to 
be  a  great  historian  of  French  manners  in  the  second 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  1874  he  made  a 
notable  sensation  with  Fromont  JeuneetRisler  Aim,  and, 
almost  simultaneously,  with  Jack.  But  these  were 
immediately  excelled  by  Le  Nabah  (1877),  a  trenchant 
satire  of  the  Second  Empire  and  the  Third  Republic. 
Then  followed,  in  a  very  different  key,  that  extremely 
delicate  study  of  the  dynastic  idea  in  bankruptcy,  which 
he  called  Les  Rois  en  Exit  (1879).  Daudet  had  built 
up  an  edifice  of  fiction  about  his  old  patron,  the  Due  de 
Momy,  in  Le  Nabob  ;  he  returned  to  politics  in  Numa 
Roumesian  (1881),  and  crystallised  his  invention  round 
the  legend  of  Gambetta.  This  book,  in  my  judgment, 
marked  the  apogee  of  Alphonse  Daudet's  genius ;  never 
again,  so  it  seems  to  me,  did  he  write  a  novel  quite  so 
large,  quite  so  masterly  in  all  its  parts,  as  Numa  Roume- 
stan.  But  L' ivangiliste  (1883),  a  satiric  picture  of 
fanatical    Protestantism,    had    brilliant    parts,    and    a 


Alphonse  Daudet  115 

great  simplicity  of  action ;  while  in  Sapho  (1884),  which 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre  has  called  "  simplement  la  Manon 
Lescaut  de  ce  siecle,"  Daudet  produced  an  elaborate 
study  of  that  obsession  of  the  feminine  which  is  so  dear 
to  our  Gallic  neighbours.  The  consensus  of  French 
criticism,  I  think,  puts  Sapho,  where  I  venture  to  put 
Numa  Roumestan,  at  the  head  of  Daudet's  novels. 
After  this  came  L'Immortel  (1888),  Rose  et  Ninette  (1892), 
even  later  stories,  never  quite  without  charm,  but 
steadily  declining  in  imagination  and  vitality,  so  that  the 
books  on  which  Daudet  bases  his  claim  to  be  regarded 
as  a  great  novelist  are  seven,  and  they  range  from  Jack 
to  Sapho,  culminating  as  I  most  obstinately  hold,  in 
Numa  Roumestan. 

In  looking  over  these  seven  extraordinary  books, 
which  we  read  in  succession  at  their  first  appearance 
with  an  enthusiasm  that  may  have  carried  the  critical 
faculty  away,  we  are  conscious  of  the  brilliant  and  solid 
effect  which  they  still  produce.  They  stand  midway 
between  the  rigidly  naturalistic  and  the  consciously 
psychological  sets  of  novels  which  France  has  seen 
flourish  during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  and  on  the 
whole,  perhaps,  they  are  standing  the  test  of  time  better 
than  either.  The  moment  we  were  fairly  launched, 
so  long  ago,  upon  the  narrative  of  Fremont  Jeune  et  Risler 
Atne,  as  soon  as  we  became  acquainted  with  "  the 
blooming  and  sonorous  Delobelle,"  as  Mr.  Henry  James 
so  happily  calls  him,  when,  again,  a  very  little  later,  we 
were  introduced  to  all  the  flatulent  humbugs  of  the 
Maison  Moronval  in  Jack,  we  acknowledged  that  here 
was  come  at  last  a  great  French  novelist,  with  whom  the 
Anglo-Saxon  reader  could  commune  with  unspeakable 
delight.  This  meridional,  who  cared  so  little  for  England, 
who  could  never  read  an  EngUsh  sentence,  seemed  from  a 


ii6  French   Profiles 

certain  limited  point  of  view  to  run  in  the  very  channel 
of  British  fiction.  He  has  been  called  (alas  !  poor  man, 
it  was  a  thorn  in  his  flesh  !)  the  French  Dickens,  but 
he  has  aspects  in  which  he  seems  Mrs,  Gaskell  and 
Anthony  Trollope  as  well,  even  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
and  Rudyard  Kipling,  A  whole  repertory  of  such 
paralleUsms  might  be  drawn  out,  if  we  examined  Daudet 
not  wisely  but  too  well. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  with  all  his  violent  southern 
colour  and  temperament,  his  pathos,  his  humour,  his 
preference  for  the  extravagant  and  superficial  parts 
of  character  and  conduct  had  a  greater  resemblance  to 
the  English  than  to  the  French  tradition  of  invented 
narrative.  This  is  true  of  works  written  before  Alphonse 
Daudet  could  possibly  have  touched  an  English  story. 
We  talk  of  his  affinity  to  Dickens,  but  that  relation  is 
much  more  strongly  marked  in  Le  Petit  Chose  than  in  any 
of  Daudet's  mature  works.  In  the  very  beginning  of 
that  story,  the  formidable  rage  of  M.  Eyssette,  and  the 
episode  of  Annou  who  marries  in  desperation  because 
she  has  lost  her  "  place,"  are  more  like  pure  Dickens 
than  anything  in  Fromont  Jeune.  It  is  quite  certain, 
from  what  he  has  protested  over  and  over  again  (and 
did  he  not  fight  poor  M.  Albert  Delpit  that  he  might  seal 
his  protest  in  blood  ?),  that  Daudet's  knowledge  of 
all  English  literature,  the  works  of  Dickens  included,  was 
extremely  exiguous.  You  could  probably  have  drawn 
it  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  without  crushing  it.  It 
remains  true,  none  the  less,  that  in  his  idea  of  how  to 
entertain  by  a  novel,  how  to  write  a  thrilling  story  of 
pity,  anger,  and  irony,  he  came  much  nearer  than  any 
other  Frenchman  to  the  Enghsh  standpoint.  When  we 
add  to  this  the  really  extraordinary  chastity  and  delicacy 
of  his  language,  the  tact  with  which,  even  in  a  book  hke 


Alphonse  Daudet  117 

Sapho,  he  avoids  all  occasion  of  offence,  and  has  therefore 
been  a  well  of  pure  and  safe  delight  to  thousands  of 
young  Englishwomen,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
the  non-critical  class  of  British  readers  look  upon 
Alphonse  Daudet  as  the  most  sympathetic  of  Continental 
novehsts.  He  is  certainly  the  one  who  offers  them  the 
smallest  chance  of  springes  and  pitfalls  dong  their 
innocent  pathway. 

In  his  great  novels,  the  art  of  Daudet  is  seen  in  his 
arrangement  and  adaptation  of  things  that  he  has 
experienced,  not  in  his  invention.  He  was  never  happy 
when  he  detached  himself  from  the  thing  absolutely 
observed  and  noted.  For  most  readers,  I  suppose,  the 
later  chapters  of  Le  Petit  Chose  are  ruined  by  the  absurd 
episode  of  Irma  Borel,  the  Creole,  a  figure  laboriously 
invented  a  la  Paul  de  Kock,  with  no  faint  knowledge  of 
any  actual  prototype.  It  is  interesting  to  compare 
this  failure  with  the  solid  success  of  the  portrait  of  Sapho 
fifteen  years  later,  when  Daudet  had  made  himself 
acquainted  with  this  type  of  woman,  and  had  noted  her 
characteristics  with  his  mature  clairvoyance.  Even  in 
his  more  purely  fantastic  creations,  surely,  the  difference 
between  what  Daudet  has  seen  and  has  not  seen  is 
instantly  felt.  What  a  distinction  there  is  between 
Tartarin  in  Tarascon,  in  Algeria,  on  the  Righi — where 
Daudet  had  accompanied  him — and  Tartarin  in  the 
South  Seas,  where  his  creator  had  to  trust  to  books  and 
fancy  !  I  am  inclined  to  push  this  so  far  as  even  to 
question  the  value  of  Wood's  Town,  a  story  which  many 
admirers  of  Daudet  have  signalled  for  special  eulogy. 
This  is  a  tale  of  a  peninsula  somewhere  in  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  where  a  tropic  city  is  built,  at  first  with  success, 
but  only  to  be  presently  overwhelmed  by  the  onset  of  the 
virgin  forest,  which  defies  all  the  exertions  of  the  inhabi- 


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tants;  lianas  are  flung  from  roof  to  roof,  the  municipal 
buildings  are  roped  to  one  another  by  chains  of  prickly- 
pear,  yuccas  pierce  the  floors  with  their  spines,  and  fig- 
trees  rend  the  walls  apart;  at  last  the  population  has 
to  take  flight  in  ships,  the  masts  of  which  are  already 
like  forest-trees,  so  laden  are  they  with  parasitic  vege- 
tation. The  whole  forms  a  fine  piece  of  melodramatic 
extravagance,  but  one  feels  what  an  infinitely  truer,  and, 
therefore,  infinitely  more  vivid  picture  of  such  a  scene 
Mr.  Cable  could  have  written  in  the  days  when  he  was 
still  interested  in  The  Grandissimes  and  Mme.  Deiphine. 

IV 

In  all  the  creations  of  Daudet,  as  we  have  said,  the 
fountain  of  tears  lies  very  close  to  the  surface.  There 
is,  however,  one  eminent  exception,  and  it  is  possible 
that  this,  in  its  sunny  gaiety,  its  unruffled  high  spirits, 
may  eventually  outlast  the  remainder.  All  his  life 
through,  Daudet  was  fascinated  by  the  mirthful  side 
of  southern  exaggeration.  He  set  himself  to  invent 
a  figure  which  should  unite  all  the  quaUties  of  the 
meridional,  a  being  in  whom  the  hallucination  of  adven- 
turous experiences  should  be  carried  to  its  drollest 
excess.  The  result  was  pure  frolic :  the  Prodigious 
Feats  of  Tartarin  de  Tarascon  {1872).  Tartarin  the 
boaster,  the  mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord,  "  le  roi  des 
chasseurs  de  casquettes,"  has  bragged  so  long  and  so 
loudly  that  even  Tarascon  demands  confirmation.  And 
so  he  sets  forth,  and  at  Algiers  he  shoots  a  Hon — an 
old,  tame,  bhnd  lion  that  has  been  taught  to  hold  a 
platter  in  its  mouth  and  beg  at  the  doors  of  mosques. 
He  returns  to  Tarascon,  still  boasting,  and  bringing 
with  him  a  mangy  camel,  "  which  has  seen  me  shoot 
all  my  Uons."     He  reposes  again  on  the  confidence  of 


Alphonse  Daudet  119 

Tarascon.  Then  in  1885,  Tartarin  sets  forth  anew,  this 
time  to  dimb  the  Alps,  being  President  of  the  Tarascon 
Alpine  Club,  and  once  more  forced  to  prove  his  prowess. 
Glorious  are  his  incredible  ascents  and  accidental  adven- 
tures. After  a  thousand  farcical  drolleries,  gulled  and 
gulling,  back  he  comes  to  Tarascon,  with  its  blinding 
dust  and  its  blinding  sunlight,  to  the  country  where  it 
is  too  bright  and  too  hot  to  attempt  to  tell  the  truth. 
Still  later,  Daudet  made  an  effort  to  carry  a  colony  from 
Tarascon  to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific  Ocean;  but  this 
time  he  was  less  vivacious  and  more  cynical.  For  sheer 
fun  and  merriment,  the  two  earlier  books  about  Tartarin 
remain,  however,  unexcelled.  There  is  nothing  else 
like  them  in  recent  French  literature,  and  those  who 
object  to  Daudet's  other  stories  here  confess  themselves 
disarmed.  Tarascon  itself,  the  little  dry  town  on  the 
Rhone,  meanwhile  accentuates  the  joke  and  adds  to  it 
by  an  increasing  exasperation  against  the  great  man  of 
letters  who  has  made  its  tragi-comical  exaltations  so 
ridiculous  and  famous.  I  have  but  recently  made  the 
personal  observation  that  it  is  impossible  to  purchase 
the  works  of  Daudet  in  the  book-shops  of  the  still- 
indignant  Tarascon, 

V 
Two  years  before  his  death  M.  Alphonse  Daudet  paid 
his  first  and  only  visit  to  London,  accompanied  by  his 
entire  family — by  his  whole  stnala,  as  he  said,  like  an 
Arab  sheikh.  Those  who  are  privileged  to  meet  him 
then  for  the  first  time  were  astonished  at  the  inconsis- 
tencies of  his  physical  condition.  To  see  Daudet  strug- 
gUng  with  infinite  distress  up  a  low  flight  of  stairs  was  to 
witness  what  seemed  the  last  caducity  of  a  worn-out 
frame.     But  his  lower  hmbs  only  were  paralysed;  and 


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once  seated  at  table,  and  a  little  rested  after  the  tor- 
tures of  locomotion,  a  sort  of  youth  reblossomed  in  him. 
Under  the  wild  locks  of  hair,  still  thick  though  striped 
with  grey,  the  eyes  preserved  their  vivacity — large  and 
liquid  eyes,  intermittently  concentrated  in  the  effort  to 
see  distinctly,  now  floating  in  a  dream,  now  focussed 
(as  it  were)  in  an  act  of  curiosity.  The  entire  physical 
and  phenomenal  aspect  of  Alphonse  Daudet  in  these 
late  years  presented  these  contradictions.  He  would 
sit  silent  and  almost  motionless;  suddenly  his  head, 
arms,  and  chest  would  be  vibrated  with  electrical  move- 
ments, the  long  white  fingers  would  twitch  in  his  beard, 
and  then  from  the  hps  a  tide  of  speech  would  pour — a 
flood  of  coloured  words.  On  the  occasion  when  I  met 
him  at  dinner,  I  recollect  that  at  dessert,  after  a  long 
silence,  he  was  suddenly  moved  to  describe,  quite  briefly, 
the  melon-harvest  at  Nimes  when  he  was  a  boy.  It  was 
an  instance,  no  doubt,  of  the  habitual  magic  of  his  style, 
sensuous  and  pictorial  at  its  best ;  in  a  moment  we  saw 
before  us  the  masses  of  golden-yellow  and  crimson  and 
sea-green  fruit  in  the  httle  white  market-place,  with  the 
incomparable  light  of  a  Provencal  morning  bathing  it 
all  in  crystal.  Every  word  seemed  the  freshest  and  the 
most  inevitable  that  a  man  could  possibly  use  in  painting 
such  a  scene,  and  there  was  not  a  superfluous  epithet. 

This  little  apologue  about  the  melons  took  us  back 
to  the  Daudet  with  whom  we  first  made  acquaintance, 
the  magician  of  the  Lettres  de  mon  Moulin.  That  aged 
figure,  trembhng  with  the  inroads  of  paralysis,  became 
in  a  flash  our  charming  friend.  Petit  Chose,  sobbing  under 
the  boughs  of  the  pomegranate  for  a  blood-red  flower  to 
remind  him  of  his  childish  joys.  Those  loose  wisps  of 
hair  had  been  dark  clusters  of  firm  curls  around  the  brows 
of  the  poet  of  Les  Amour euses.     It  was  pleasant  for  one 


Alphonse  Daudet  121 


fated  to  see  this  beloved  writer  only  in  the  period  of 
his  decay  to  feel  thus  that  the  emblems  of  youth  were 
still  about  him.  The  spirit  had  not  surrendered  to  the 
sad  physical  dechne,  and  so,  for  all  its  distressing  ob- 
viousness, the  latter  did  not  produce  an  overpowering 
sensation  of  melancholy.  It  emphasised  the  impression 
one  had  formed  in  reading  his  books ;  with  Daudet  all 
the  ideas  were  concrete  and  positive.  He  had  no  thought, 
properly  speaking,  but  only  a  ceaseless  flow  of  violent 
and  pictorial  observations,  as  intense  as  they  were 
volatile.  These  had  to  be  noted  down  in  haste  as  they 
arrived,  or  else  a  fresh  sensation  would  come  and  banish 
them  for  ever.  He  was  an  impressionist  painter,  the 
colours  on  whose  palette  were  words  of  an  indescribable 
abundance,  variety,  and  exactitude. 

For  some  years,  it  is  hardly  to  be  questioned  that 
Alphonse  Daudet  was  the  leading  novelist  of  the  world. 
From  1877,  when  he  pubhshed  Le  Nabab,  to  1881,  when 
he  reached  the  apex  of  his  glory  in  Numa  Roumestan, 
he  had  no  rival.  That  was  a  position  which  it  was 
impossible  that  he  should  retain. 

It  is  too  early  to  attempt  to  fix  the  position  which 
Alphonse  Daudet  will  hold  in  French  hterature.  In 
spite  of  the  extraordinary  professional  manifestation 
produced  immediately  after  his  death  in  Paris,  it  was 
easy  to  see  that  he  no  longer  stood  in  the  affections  of 
unprejudiced  readers  quite  where  he  did.  In  1888  it 
would  have  required  considerable  courage  to  suggest 
that  Daudet  was  not  in  the  very  first  rank  of  novel- 
writers  ;  in  1898,  even  the  special  pleading  of  friendship 
scarcely  urged  so  much  as  this.  It  is  inevitable,  if  we 
subject  Daudet  to  the  only  test  which  suits  his  very 
splendid  and  honourable  career,  that  we  should  hesitate 
in  placing  him  with  the  great  creative  minds.     His 


122  French   Profiles 

beautiful  talent  is  dwarfed  when  we  compare  it  with 
Balzac,  with  Tourgenieff,  with  Flaubert,  even  with 
Maupassant.  He  is  vivacious,  brilliant,  pathetic, 
exuberant,  but  he  is  not  subtle ;  his  gifts  are  on  the  sur- 
face. He  observes  rather  than  imagines;  he  belongs 
to  the  fascinating,  but  too  often  ephemeral  class  of 
writers  who  manufacture  types,  and  develop  what  the 
Ehzabethans  used  to  call  "  humours."  And  this  he  does, 
not  by  an  exercise  of  fancy,  not  by  a  penetrating  flash 
of  intuition,  but  as  a  "  realist,"  as  one  who  depends  on 
little  green  books  of  notes,  and  docketed  bundles  of 
pUces  justificatives. 

But  we  need  not  be  ungracious  and  dwell  on  these 
shortcomings  in  a  genius  so  charming,  so  intimately 
designed  to  please.  Whether  his  figures  were  invented 
or  noted,  they  live  briUiantly  in  our  memories.  Who 
will  lose  the  impression,  so  amazingly  vivid,  left  by  the 
"  Cabecilla  "  in  the  C antes  C hoists,  or  by  Les  Femmes 
d' Artistes,  "  ce  livre  si  beau,  si  cruel,"  as  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant called  it  ?  Who  will  forget  the  cunning,  timid 
Jansoulet  as  he  came  out  of  Tunis  to  seek  his  fortune 
in  Paris  ?  Who  the  turbulent  Numa  Roumestan,  or 
that  barber's  block,  the  handsome  Valmajour,  with  his 
languishing  airs  and  his  tambourine  ?  Who  Queen 
Frederique  when  she  discovers  that  the  diamonds  of 
lUyria  are  paste  ?  and  who  Mme.  Ebsen  in  her  final 
interview  with  Ehne  ?  The  love  of  hfe,  of  light,  of  the 
surface  of  all  beautiful  things,  the  ornament  of  all 
human  creations,  illuminates  the  books  of  Alphonse 
Daudet.  The  only  thing  he  hated  was  the  horrible  little 
octopus- woman,  the  Fanny  Legrand  or  Sidonie  Ch6be, 
who  has  no  other  object  or  function  than  to  wreck  the 
lives  of  weak  young  men.  To  her,  perhaps,  he  is  cruel ; 
she  was  hardly  worth  his  steel.    But  everything  else 


Alphonse  Daudet  123 

he  loves  to  contemplate;  even  when  he  laughs  at 
Tarascon  he  loves  it;  and  in  an  age  when  the  cynical 
and  the  sinister  take  so  wide  a  possession  of  literature, 
our  thanks  are  eternally  due  to  a  man  who  built  up  for 
us  a  world  of  hope  and  light  and  benignity. 

i8g8. 


THE  SHORT  STORIES  OF  ZOLA 


THE  SHORT  STORIES  OF  ZOLA 

It  is  by  his  huge  novels,  and  principally  by  those  of  the 
Rougon-Macquart  series,  that  Zola  is  known  to  the 
public  and  to  the  critics.  Nevertheless,  he  found  time 
during  the  forty  years  of  his  busy  literary  career  to  publish 
about  as  many  small  stories,  now  comprised  in  four 
separate  volumes.  It  is  natural  that  his  novels  should 
present  so  very  much  wider  and  more  attractive  a 
subject  for  analysis  that,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  even 
in  France  no  critic  has  hitherto  taken  the  shorter  pro- 
ductions separately,  and  discussed  Zola  as  a  maker  of 
contes.  Yet  there  is  very  distinct  interest  in  seeing  how 
such  a  thunderer  or  bellower  on  the  trumpet  can  breathe 
through  silver;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  short 
stories  reveal  a  Zola  considerably  dissimilar  to  the  author 
of  Nana  and  of  La  Terre — a  much  more  optimistic, 
romantic,  and  gentle  writer.  If,  moreover,  he  had 
nowhere  assailed  the  decencies  more  severely  than  he 
does  in  these  thirty  or  forty  short  stories,  he  would  never 
have  been  named  among  the  enemies  of  Mrs.  Grundy, 
and  the  gates  of  the  Palais  Mazarin  would  long  ago  have 
been  opened  to  receive  him.  It  is,  indeed,  to  a  lion  with 
his  mane  en  papillotes  that  I  here  desire  to  attract  the 
attention  of  English  readers  ;  to  a  man-eating  monster, 
indeed,  but  to  one  who  is  on  his  best  behaviour  and 
bUnking  in  the  warm  sunshine  of  Provence. 

I 

The  first  public  appearance  of  Zola  in  any  form  was 
made  as  a  writer  of  a  short  story.     A  southern  journal, 

127 


128  French   Profiles 

La  Provence,  published  at  Aix,  brought  out  in  1859  ^ 
little  conte  entitled  La  Fee  Amoureuse.  When  this  was 
written,  in  1858,  the  future  novelist  was  a  student  of 
eighteen,  attending  the  rhetoric  classes  at  the  Lyc6e 
St.  Louis;  when  it  was  printed,  life  in  Paris,  far  from 
his  delicious  South,  was  beginning  to  open  before  him, 
harsh,  vague,  with  a  threat  of  poverty  and  failure.  La 
Fie  Amoureuse  may  still  be  read  by  the  curious  in  the 
Contes  a  Ninon.  It  is  a  fantastic  little  piece,  in  the  taste 
of  the  eighteenth-century  trifles  of  Cr^billon  or  Boufflers, 
written  with  considerable  care  in  an  over-luscious  vein— 
a  fairy  tale  about  an  enchanted  bud  of  sweet  marjoram, 
which  expands  and  reveals  the  amorous  fay,  guardian 
of  the  loves  of  Prince  Lois  and  the  fair  Odette.  This 
is  a  moonlight-coloured  piece  of  unrecognisable  Zola, 
indeed,  belonging  to  the  period  of  his  lost  essay  on  "  The 
Blind  Milton  dictating  to  his  Elder  Daughter,  while  the 
Younger  accompanies  him  upon  the  Harp,"  a  piece  which 
many  have  sighed  in  vain  to  see. 

He  was  twenty  when,  in  i860,  during  the  course  of 
blackening  reams  of  paper  with  poems  a  la  Musset, 
he  turned,  in  the  aerial  garret,  or  lantern  above  the 
garret  of  35  Rue  St.  Victor,  to  the  composition  of  a  second 
story — Le  Carnet  de  Danse.  This  is  addressed  to  Ninon, 
the  ideal  lady  of  all  Zola's  early  writings — the  fleet  and 
jocund  virgin  of  the  South,  in  whom  he  romantically 
personifies  the  Provence  after  which  his  whole  soul  was 
thirsting  in  the  desert  of  Paris.  This  is  an  exquisite 
piece  of  writing — a  little  too  studied,  perhaps,  too  full 
of  opulent  and  voluptuous  adjectives;  written,  as  we 
may  plainly  see,  under  the  influence  of  Th6ophile  Gautier. 
The  story,  such  as  it  is,  is  a  conversation  between 
Georgette  and  the  programme-card  of  her  last  night's 
ball.    What  interest  Le  Carnet  de  Danse  possesses  it  owes 


Zola  1 29 

to  the  style,  especially  that  of  the  opening  pages,  in 
which  the  joyous  Provencal  life  is  elegantly  described. 
The  young  man,  still  stumbhng  in  the  wrong  path,  had 
at  least  become  a  writer. 

For  the  next  two  years  Zola  was  starving,  and  vainly 
striving  to  be  a  poet.  Another  "  belvedere,"  as  Paul 
Alexis  calls  it,  another  glazed  garret  above  the  garret, 
received  him  in  the  Rue  Neuve  St.  Etienne  du  Mont. 
Here  the  squalor  of  Paris  was  around  him;  the  young 
idealist  from  the  forests  and  lagoons  of  Provence  found 
himself  lost  in  a  loud  and  horrid  world  of  quarrels,  oaths, 
and  dirt,  of  popping  beer-bottles  and  yelling  women.  A 
year,  at  the  age  of  two-and-twenty,  spent  in  this  atmos- 
phere of  sordid  and  noisy  vice,  left  its  mark  for  ever 
on  the  spirit  of  the  young  observer.  He  lived  on  bread 
and  coffee,  with  two  sous'  worth  of  apples  upon  gala  days. 
He  had,  on  one  occasion,  even  to  make  an  Arab  of  him- 
self, sitting  with  the  bed-wraps  draped  about  him,  because 
he  had  pawned  his  clothes.  All  the  time,  serene  and 
ardent,  he  was  writing  modern  imitations  of  Dante's 
Divina  Commedia,  epics  on  the  genesis  of  the  world, 
didactic  hymns  to  Religion,  and  love-songs  by  the  gross. 
Towards  the  close  of  1861  this  happy  misery,  this  wise 
folly,  came  to  an  end;  he  obtained  a  clerkship  in  the 
famous  publishing  house  of  M.  Hachette. 

But  after  these  two  years  of  poverty  and  hardship 
he  began  to  write  a  few  things  which  were  not  in  verse. 
Early  in  1862  he  again  addressed  to  the  visionary  Ninon 
a  short  story  called  Le  Sang.  He  confesses  himself 
weary,  as  Ninon  also  must  be,  of  the  coquettings  of  the 
rose  and  the  infidelities  of  the  butterfly.  He  will  tell 
her  a  terrible  tale  of  real  life.  But,  in  fact,  he  is  abso- 
lutely in  the  clouds  of  the  worst  romanticism.  Four 
soldiers,  round  a  camp-fire,  suffer  agonies  of  ghostly 


130  French   Profiles 

adventure,  in  the  manner  of  Hofmann  or  of  Petrus 
Borel.  We  seem  to  have  returned  to  the  age  of  1830, 
with  its  vampires  and  its  ghouls.  Simpiice,  which  comes 
next  in  point  of  date,  is  far  more  characteristic,  and 
here,  indeed,  we  find  one  talent  of  the  future  novehst 
already  developed.  Simpiice  is  the  son  of  a  worldly 
king,  who  despises  him  for  his  innocence;  the  prince 
shps  away  into  the  primeval  forest  and  hves  with  dragon- 
flies  and  water-lilies.  In  the  personal  hfe  given  to  the 
forest  itself,  as  well  as  to  its  inhabitants,  we  have  some- 
thing very  like  the  future  ideahsations  in  L'Ahhe  Mouret, 
although  the  touch  is  yet  timid  and  the  flashes  of 
romantic  insight  fugitive.  Simpiice  is  an  exceedingly 
pretty  fairy  story,  curiously  like  what  Mrs.  Alfred  Gatty 
used  to  write  for  sentimental  English  girls  and  boys : 
it  was  probably  inspired  to  some  extent  by  George  Sand. 
On  a  somewhat  larger  scale  is  Les  Voleurs  et  I'Ane, 
which  belongs  to  the  same  period  of  composition.  It 
is  delightful  to  find  Zola  describing  his  garret  as  "  full 
of  flowers  and  of  light,  and  so  high  up  that  sometimes 
one  hears  the  angels  talking  on  the  roof."  His 
story  describes  a  summer  day's  adventure  on  the 
Seine,  an  improvised  picnic  of  strangers  on  a  grassy 
island  of  elms,  a  siesta  disturbed  by  the  somewhat 
stagey  trick  of  a  fantastic  coquette.  According  to  his 
faithful  biographer,  Paul  Alexis,  the  author,  towards  the 
close  of  1862,  chose  another  lodging,  again  a  romantic 
chamber,  overlooking  this  time  the  whole  extent  of  the 
cemetery  of  Montparnasse.  In  this  elegiacal  retreat 
he  composed  two  short  stories,  Sceurs  des  Pauvres  and 
Celle  qui  m'aime.  Of  these,  the  former  was  written 
as  a  commission  for  the  young  Zola's  employer,  M. 
Hachette,  who  wanted  a  tale  appropriate  for  a  children's 
newspaper  which  his  firm  was  publishing.     After  reading 


Zola  1 3 1 

what  his  clerk  submitted  to  him,  the  publisher  is  said 
to  have  remarked,  "  Vous  etes  un  revolte,"  and  to  have 
returned  him  the  manuscript  as  "  too  revolutionary." 
Sceurs  des  Pauvres  is  a  tiresome  fable,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  understand  why  Zola  has  continued  to  preserve  it 
among  his  writings.  It  belongs  to  the  class  of  semi- 
realistic  stories  which  Tolstoi  has  since  then  com- 
posed with  such  admirable  skill.  But  Zola  is  not 
happy  among  saintly  visitants  to  little  holy  girls,  nor 
among  pieces  of  gold  that  turn  into  bats  and  rats  in 
the  hands  of  selfish  peasants.  Why  this  anodyne  little 
religious  fable  should  ever  have  heen  considered  revolu- 
tionary, it  is  impossible  to  conceive. 

Of  a  very  different  order  is  Celle  qui  m'aime,  a  story 
of  real  power.  Outside  a  tent,  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris, 
a  man  in  a  magician's  dress  stands  beating  a  drum  and 
inviting  the  passers-by  to  enter  and  gaze  on  the  realisa- 
tion of  their  dreams,  the  face  of  her  who  loves  you.  The 
author  is  persuaded  to  go  in,  and  he  finds  himself  in 
the  midst  of  an  assemblage  of  men  and  boys,  women  and 
girls,  who  pass  up  in  turn  to  look  through  a  glass  trap 
in  a  box.  In  the  description  of  the  various  types,  as 
they  file  by,  of  the  aspect  of  the  interior  of  the  tent, 
there  is  the  touch  of  a  new  hand.  The  vividness  of  the 
study  is  not  maintained ;  it  passes  off  into  romanesque 
extravagance,  but  for  a  few  moments  the  attentive 
Ustener,  who  goes  back  to  these  early  stories,  is  conscious 
that  he  has  heard  the  genuine  accent  of  the  master 
of  Naturalism. 

Months  passed,  and  the  young  Provencal  seemed  to 
be  making  but  little  progress  in  the  world.  His  poems 
definitely  failed  to  find  a  pubhsher,  and  for  a  while  he 
seems  to  have  flagged  even  in  the  production  of  prose. 
Towards  the  beginning  of  1864,  however,  he  put  together 


132  French  Profiles 

the  seven  stories  which  I  have  already  mentioned, 
added  to  them  a  short  novel  entitled  Aventures  du 
Grand  Sidoine,  prefixed  a  fanciful  and  very  prettily 
turned  address  A  Ninon,  and  carried  off  the  collection 
to  a  new  publisher,  M.  Hetzel.  It  was  accepted,  and 
issued  in  October  of  the  same  year.  Zola's  first  book 
appeared  under  the  title  of  Conies  a  Ninon.  This  volume 
was  very  well  received  by  the  reviewers,  but  ten  years 
passed  before  the  growing  fame  of  its  author  carried  it 
beyond  its  first  edition  of  one  thousand  copies. 

There  is  no  critical  impropriety  in  considering  these 
early  stories,  since  Zola  never  allowed  them,  as  he  allowed 
several  of  his  subsequent  novels,  to  pass  out  of  print. 
Nor,  from  the  point  of  view  of  style,  is  there  anything  to 
be  ashamed  of  in  them.  They  are  written  with  an 
uncertain  and  an  imitative,  but  always  with  a  careful 
hand,  and  some  passages  of  natural  description,  if  a 
httle  too  precious,  are  excellently  modulated.  What  is 
really  very  curious  in  the  first  Contes  a  Ninon  is  the  opti- 
mistic tone,  the  sentimentality,  the  luscious  idealism. 
The  young  man  takes  a  cobweb  for  his  canvas,  and 
paints  upon  it  a  rainbow-dew  with  a  peacock's  feather- 
Except,  for  a  brief  moment,  in  Celle  qui  m'aime,  there 
is  not  a  phrase  that  suggests  the  naturalism  of  the 
Rougon-Macquart  novels,  and  it  is  an  amusing  circum- 
stance that,  while  Zola  was  not  only  practising, 
but  very  sternly  and  vivaciously  preaching,  the  gospel 
of  Realism,  this  innocent  volume  of  fairy  stories  should 
all  the  time  have  figured  among  his  works.  The 
humble  student  who  should  turn  from  the  master's 
criticism  to  find  an  example  in  his  writings,  and  who 
should  fall  by  chance  on  the  Contes  a  Ninon,  would  be 
liable  to  no  small  distress  of  bewilderment. 


Zola 


II 


133 


Ten  years  later,  in  1874,  Zola  published  a  second 
volume  of  short  stories,  entitled  Nouveaux  Conies  d 
Ninon.  His  position,  his  literary  character,  had  in 
the  meantime  undergone  a  profound  modification. 
In  1874  he  was  no  longer  unknown  to  the  public  or  to 
himself.  He  had  already  published  four  of  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  novels,  embodying  the  natural  and  social 
history  of  a  French  family  during  the  Second  Empire. 
He  was  scandalous  and  famous,  and  already  bore  a 
great  turbulent  name  in  hterature  and  criticism.  The 
Nouveaux  Contes  d  Ninon,  composed  at  intervals  during 
that  period  of  stormy  evolution,  have  the  extraordinary 
interest  which  attends  the  incidental  work  thrown  off 
by  a  great  author  during  the  early  and  noisy  manhood 
of  his  talent.  After  1864  Zola  had  written  one  un- 
successful novel  after  another,  until  at  last,  in  Therhe 
Raquin,  with  its  magnificent  study  of  crime  chastised 
by  its  own  hideous  after-gust,  he  produced  a  really 
remarkable  performance.  The  scene  in  which  the 
paralytic  mother  tries  to  denounce  the  domestic 
murderers  was  in  itself  enough  to  prove  that  France 
possessed  one  novelist  the  more. 

This  was  late  in  1867,  when  M,  Zola  was  in  his  twenty- 
eighth  year.  A  phrase  of  Louis  Ulbach's,  in  reviewing 
Therese  Raquin,  which  he  called  "  literature  putride," 
is  regarded  as  having  started  the  question  of  Naturalism, 
and  M.  Zola,  who  had  not,  up  to  that  time,  had  any 
notion  of  founding  a  school,  or  even  of  moving  in  any 
definite  direction,  was  led  to  adopt  the  theories  which 
we  identify  with  his  name  during  the  angry  dispute 
with  Ulbach.  In  1865  he  had  begun  to  be  drawn 
towards  Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt,  and  to  feel. 


134  French   Profiles 

as  he  puts  it,  that  in  the  salons  of  the  Parnassians  he 
was  growing  more  and  more  out  of  his  element  "  among 
so  many  impenitent  romantiques."  Meanwhile  he  was 
for  ever  feeding  the  furnaces  of  journaUsm,  scorched 
and  desiccated  by  the  blaze  of  public  life,  by  the  daily 
struggle  for  bread.  He  was  roughly  affronting  the 
taste  of  those  who  differed  from  him,  with  rude  hands 
he  was  thrusting  out  of  his  path  the  timid,  the  dull,  the 
old-fashioned.  The  spectacle  of  these  years  of  Zola's 
life  is  not  altogether  a  pleasant  one,  but  it  leaves  on  us 
the  impression  of  a  colossal  purpose  pursued  with  force 
and  courage.  In  1871  the  first  of  the  Rougon-Macquart 
novels  appeared,  and  the  author  was  fairly  launched 
on  his  career.  He  was  writing  books  of  large  size,  in 
which  he  was  endeavouring  to  tell  the  truth  about 
modern  life  with  absolute  veracity,  no  matter  how 
squalid,  or  ugly,  or  venomous  that  truth  might  be. 

But  during  the  whole  of  this  tempestuous  decade 
Zola,  in  his  hot  battlefield  of  Paris,  heard  the  voice  of 
Ninon  calHng  to  him  from  the  leafy  hollows,  from  behind 
the  hawthorn  hedges,  of  his  own  dewy  Provence — the 
cool  Provence  of  earhest  flowery  spring.  When  he 
caught  these  accents  whistling  to  his  memory  from  the 
past,  and  could  no  longer  resist  answering  them,  he 
was  accustomed  to  write  a  little  conte,  light  and  innocent, 
and  brief  enough  to  be  the  note  of  a  caged  bird  from 
indoors  answering  its  mate  in  the  trees  of  the  garden. 
This  is  the  real  secret  of  the  utterly  incongruous  tone  of 
the  Nouveaux  Contes  when  we  compare  them  with 
the  Curie  and  Madeleine  Ferat  of  the  same  period. 
It  would  be  utterly  to  misunderstand  the  nature  of 
Zola  to  complain,  as  Pierre  Loti  did  the  other  day, 
that  the  coarseness  and  cynicism  of  the  naturalistic 
novel,  the  tone  of  a  ball  at  Belleville,  could  not  sincerely 


Zola  135 

co-exist  with  a  love  of  beauty,  or  with  a  nostalgia  for 
youth  and  country  pleasures.  In  the  short  stories  of 
the  period  of  which  we  are  speaking,  that  poet  who  dies 
in  most  middle-aged  men  lived  on  for  Zola,  artificially, 
in  a  crystal  box  carefully  addressed  "  k  Ninon  li-bas," 
a  box  into  which,  at  intervals,  the  master  of  the  Realists 
shpped  a  document  of  the  most  refined  ideahty. 

Of  these  tiny  stories — there  are  twelve  of  them  within 
one  hundred  pages — not  all  are  quite  worthy  of  his 
genius.  He  grimaces  a  little  too  much  in  Les  Epaules 
de  la  Marquise,  and  M.  Bourget  has  since  analysed  the 
little  self-indulgent  devote  of  quality  more  successfully 
than  Zola  did  in  Le  Jeune.  But  most  of  them  are  very 
charming.  Here  is  Le  Grand  Michu,  a  study  of  gallant, 
stupid  boyhood ;  here  Les  Paradis  des  Chats,  one  of  the 
author's  rare  escapes  into  humour.  In  Le  Forgeron, 
with  its  story  of  the  jaded  and  cynical  town-man,  who 
finds  health  and  happiness  by  retiring  to  a  lodging 
within  the  very  thunders  of  a  village  blacksmith,  we 
have  a  profound  criticism  of  life.  Le  Petit  Village  is 
interesting  to  us  here,  because,  with  its  pathetic  picture 
of  Woerth  in  Alsace,  it  is  the  earliest  of  Zola's  studies  of 
war.  In  other  of  these  stories  the  spirit  of  Watteau 
seems  to  inspire  the  sooty  Vulcan  of  Naturalism.  He 
prattles  of  moss-grown  fountains,  of  alleys  of  wild  straw- 
berries, of  rendezvous  under  the  wings  of  the  larks,  of 
moonlight  strolls  in  the  bosquets  of  a  chateau.  In  every 
one,  without  exception,  is  absent  that  tone  of  brutality 
which  we  associate  with  the  notion  of  Zola's  genius. 
All  is  gentle  irony  and  pastoral  sweetness,  or  else 
downright  pathetic  sentiment. 

The  volume  of  Nouveaux  Contes  a  Ninon  closes  with 
a  story  which  is  much  longer  and  considerably  more 
important  than  the  rest.     Les  Quatre  Journees  de  Jean 


136  French  Profiles 

Gourdon  deserves  to  rank  among  the  very  best  things 
to  which  Zola  has  signed  his  name.  It  is  a  study  of 
four  typical  days  in  the  life  of  a  Provencal  peasant  of 
the  better  sort,  told  by  the  man  himself.  In  the  first 
of  these  it  is  spring  :  Jean  Gourdon  is  eighteen  years 
of  age,  and  he  steals  away  from  the  house  of  his  uncle 
Lazare,  a  country  priest,  that  he  may  meet  his  coy 
sweetheart  Babet  by  the  waters  of  the  broad  Durance. 
His  uncle  follows  and  captures  him,  but  the  threatened 
sermon  turns  into  a  benediction,  the  priestly  male- 
diction into  an  impassioned  song  to  the  blossoming 
springtide.  Babet  and  Jean  receive  the  old  man's 
blessing  on  their  betrothal. 

Next  follows  a  day  in  summer,  five  years  later;  Jean, 
as  a  soldier  in  the  Italian  war,  goes  through  the  horrors 
of  a  battle  and  is  wounded,  but  not  dangerously,  in  the 
shoulder.  Just  as  he  marches  into  action  he  receives  a 
letter  from  Uncle  Lazare  and  Babet,  full  of  tender  fears 
and  tremors;  he  reads  it  when  he  recovers  conscious- 
ness after  the  battle.  Presently  he  creeps  off  to  help 
his  excellent  colonel,  and  they  support  one  another 
till  both  are  carried  off  to  hospital.  This  episode, 
which  has  something  in  common  with  the  Sevastopol  of 
Tolstoi,  is  exceedingly  ingenious  in  its  observation  of  the 
sentiments  of  a  common  man  under  fire. 

The  third  part  of  the  story  occurs  fifteen  years  later. 
Jean  and  Babet  have  now  long  been  married,  and  Uncle 
Lazare,  in  extreme  old  age,  has  given  up  his  cure,  and 
fives  with  them  in  their  farm  by  the  river.  All  things 
have  prospered  with  them  save  one.  They  are  rich, 
healthy,  devoted  to  one  another,  respected  by  all  their 
neighbours;  but  there  is  a  single  happiness  lacking — 
they  have  no  child.  And  now,  in  the  high  autumn 
splendour — when  the  corn  and  the  grapes  are  ripe,  and 


Zola  1 37 

the  lovely  Durance  winds  like  a  riband  of  white  satin 
through  the  gold  and  purple  of  the  landscape — this  gift 
also  is  to  be  theirs.  A  httle  son  is  born  to  them  in  the 
midst  of  the  vintage  weather,  and  the  old  uncle,  to  whom 
life  has  now  no  further  good  thing  to  offer,  drops  pain- 
lessly from  hfe,  shaken  down  Hke  a  blown  leaf  by  his 
excess  of  joy,  on  the  evening  of  the  birthday  of  the  child. 
The  optimistic  tone  has  hitherto  been  so  consistently 
preserved,  that  we  must  almost  resent  the  tragedy  of 
the  fourth  day.  This  is  eighteen  years  later,  and  Jean 
is  now  an  elderly  man.  His  son  Jacques  is  in  early 
manhood.  In  the  midst  of  their  fehcity,  on  a  winter's 
night,  the  Durance  rises  in  spate,  and  all  are  swept  away. 
It  is  impossible,  in  a  brief  sketch,  to  give  an  impression 
of  the  charm  and  romantic  sweetness  of  this  little  master- 
piece, a  veritable  hymn  to  the  Ninon  of  Provence ;  but 
it  raises  many  curious  reflections  to  consider  that  this 
exquisitely  pathetic  pastoral,  with  all  its  gracious  and 
tender  personages,  should  have  been  written  by  the 
master  of  Naturahsm,  the  author  of  Germinal  and  of 
Pot-Bouille. 

Ill 

In  1878,  Zola,  who  had  long  been  wishing  for  a  place 
whither  to  escape  from  the  roar  of  Paris,  bought  a  httle 
property  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Seine,  between  Poissy 
and  Meulan,  where  he  built  himself  the  house  which  he 
inhabited  to  the  last,  and  which  he  made  so  famous. 
Medan,  the  village  in  which  this  property  is  placed,  is 
a  very  quiet  hamlet  of  less  than  two  hundred  inhabitants, 
absolutely  unillustrious,  save  that,  according  to  tradition, 
Charles  the  Bold  was  baptized  in  the  font  of  its  parish 
church.  The  river  lies  before  it,  with  its  rich  meadows, 
its  poplars,  its  willow  groves ;  a  delicious  and  somnolent 


138  French   Profiles 

air  of  peace  hangs  over  it,  though  so  close  to  Paris. 
Thither  the  master's  particular  friends  and  disciples 
soon  began  to  gather  :  that  enthusiastic  Boswell,  Paul 
Alexis ;  Guy  de  Maupassant,  a  stalwart  oarsman,  in  his 
skiff,  from  Rouen;  others,  whose  names  were  soon  to 
come  prominently  forward  in  connection  with  that 
naturalistic  school  of  which  Zola  was  the  leader. 

It  was  in  1880  that  the  httle  hamlet  on  the  Poissy 
Road  awoke  to  find  itself  made  famous  by  the  pubUca- 
tion  of  a  volume  which  marks  an  epoch  in  French  litera- 
ture, and  still  more  in  the  history  of  the  short  story. 
Les  Soirees  de  Medan  was  a  manifesto  by  the  naturalists, 
the  most  definite  and  the  most  defiant  which  had  up  to 
that  time  been  made.  It  consisted  of  six  short  stories, 
several  of  which  were  of  remarkable  excellence,  and  all 
of  which  awakened  an  amount  of  discussion  almost 
unprecedented.  Zola  came  first  with  L'AUaque  du 
Moulin,  which  is  rather  a  short  novel  than  a  genuine 
conte.  The  next  story  was  Boule  de  Suif,  a  veritable 
masterpiece  in  a  new  vein,  by  an  entirely  new  novelist, 
a  certain  M,  Guy  de  Maupassant,  thirty  years  of  age, 
who  had  been  presented  to  Zola,  with  warm  recommen- 
dations, by  Gustave  Flaubert.  The  other  contributors 
were  M.  Henri  Ceard,  who  also  had  as  yet  published 
nothing,  a  man  who  seems  to  have  greatly  impressed  all 
his  associates,  but  who  has  done  little  or  nothing  to 
justify  their  hopes;  M.  Joris  Karel  Huysmans,  older 
than  the  rest,  and  already  somewhat  distinguished  for 
picturesque,  malodorous  novels;  M.  L6on  Hennique,  a 
youth  from  Guadeloupe,  who  had  attracted  attention 
by  a  very  odd  and  powerful  novel.  La  Devouee,  the  story 
of  an  inventor  who  murders  his  daughter  that  he  may 
employ  her  fortune  on  perfecting  his  machine;  and 
finally,  the  faithful   Paul  Alexis,  a  native,  hke  Zola 


Zola  1 39 

himself,  of  Aix  in  Provence,  and  full  of  the  perfervid 
extravagance  of  the  South.  The  thread  on  which  the 
whole  book  is  hung  is  the  supposition  that  these  stories 
are  brought  to  Medan  to  be  read  of  an  evening  to  Zola, 
and  that  he  leads  off  by  telhng  a  tale  of  his  own. 

Nothing  need  be  said  here,  however,  of  the  works  of 
those  disciples  who  placed  themselves  under  the  flag 
of  Medan,  and  little  of  that  story  in  which,  with  his 
accustomed  bonhomie  of  a  good  giant,  Zola  accepted  their 
comradeship  and  consented  to  march  with  them.  The 
Attack  on  the  Mill  is  very  well  known  to  Enghsh  readers, 
who,  even  when  they  have  not  met  with  it  in  the  original, 
have  been  empowered  to  estimate  its  force  and  truth  as 
a  narrative.  Whenever  Zola  writes  of  war,  he  writes 
seriously  and  well.  Like  the  Julien  of  his  late  reminis- 
cences, he  has  never  loved  war  for  its  own  sake.  He  has 
little  of  the  mad  and  pompous  chivalry  of  the  typical 
Frenchman  in  his  nature.  He  sees  war  as  the  disturber, 
the  annihilator ;  he  recognises  in  it  mainly  a  destructive, 
stupid,  unintelligible  force,  set  in  motion  by  those  in 
power  for  the  discomfort  of  ordinary  beings,  of  workers 
like  himself.  But  in  the  course  of  three  European  wars 
— those  of  his  childhood,  of  his  youth,  of  his  maturity — 
he  has  come  to  see  beneath  the  surface,  and  in  La  Debacle 
he  almost  agrees  with  our  young  Jacobin  poets  of  one 
hundred  years  ago,  that  Slaughter  is  God's  daughter. 

In  this  connection,  and  as  a  commentary  on  The 
Attack  on  the  Mill,  I  would  commend  to  the  earnest 
attention  of  readers  the  three  short  papers  entitled  Trois 
Guerres.  Nothing  on  the  subject  has  been  written  more 
picturesque,  nor,  in  its  simple  way,  more  poignant,  than 
this  triple  chain  of  reminiscences.  Whether  Louis  and 
Julien  existed  under  those  forms,  or  whether  the  episodes 
which  they  illustrate  are  fictitious,   matters  little  or 


140  French   Profiles 

nothing.  The  brothers  are  natural  enough,  deUghtful 
enough,  to  belong  to  the  world  of  fiction,  and  if  their 
story  is,  in  the  historical  sense,  true,  it  is  one  of  those 
rare  instances  in  which  fact  is  better  than  fancy.  The 
crisis  under  which  the  timid  Julien,  having  learned  the 
death  of  his  spirited  martial  brother,  is  not  broken 
down,  but  merely  frozen  into  a  cold  soldierly  passion, 
and  spends  the  remainder  of  the  campaign — he,  the 
poet,  the  nestler  by  the  fireside,  the  timid  club-man — 
in  watching  behind  hedges  for  Prussians  to  shoot  or  stab, 
is  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  and  most  interesting 
that  a  novelist  has  ever  tried  to  describe.  And  the 
light  that  it  throws  on  war  as  a  disturber  of  the  moral 
nature,  as  a  dynamitic  force  exploding  in  the  midst  of 
an  elaborately  co-related  society,  is  unsurpassed,  even 
by  the  studies  which  Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  has  made  in 
a  similar  direction.  It  is  unsurpassed,  because  it  is 
essentially  without  prejudice.  It  admits  the  discomfort, 
the  horrible  vexation  and  shame  of  war,  and  it  tears 
aside  the  conventional  purple  and  tinsel  of  it;  but  at 
the  same  time  it  admits,  not  without  a  sigh,  that  even 
this  clumsy  artifice  may  be  the  only  one  available  for  the 
cleansing  of  the  people. 

IV 

In  1883,  Zola  published  a  third  volume  of  short  stories, 
under  the  title  of  the  opening  one,  Le  Capitaine  Burle. 
This  collection  contains  the  dehcate  series  of  brief  semi- 
autobiographical  essays  called  Aux  Champs,  little  studies 
of  past  impression,  touched  with  a  charm  which  is  almost 
kindred  to  that  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  memories. 
With  this  exception,  the  volume  consists  of  four  short 
stories,  and  of  a  set  of  little  death-bed  anecdotes,  called 
Comment  on  Meurt.    This  latter  is  hardly  in  the  writer's 


Zola  1 4 1 

best  style,  and  suffers  by  suggesting  the  immeasurably 
finer  and  deeper  studies  of  the  same  kind  which  the 
genius  of  Tolstoi  has  elaborated.  Of  these  little  sketches 
of  death,  one  alone,  that  of  Madame  Rousseau,  the 
stationer's  wife,  is  quite  of  the  best  class.  This  is  an 
excellent  episode  from  the  sort  of  Parisian  Hfe  which 
Zola  understands  best,  the  lower  middle  class,  the  small 
and  active  shopkeeper,  who  just  contrives  to  be  respect- 
able and  no  more.  The  others  seem  to  be  invented  rather 
than  observed. 

The  four  stories  which  make  up  the  bulk  of  this  book 
are  almost  typical  examples  of  Zola's  mature  style. 
They  are  worked  out  with  extreme  care,  they  display 
in  every  turn  the  skill  of  the  practised  narrator,  they 
are  solid  and  yet  buoyant  in  style,  and  the  construction 
of  each  may  be  said  to  be  faultless.  It  is  faultless  to 
a  fault ;  in  other  words,  the  error  of  the  author  is  to  be 
mechanically  and  inevitably  correct.  It  is  difficult  to 
define  wherein  the  over-elaboration  shows  itself,  but  in 
every  case  the  close  of  the  story  leaves  us  sceptical  and 
cold.  The  denouement  is  too  brilliant  and  conclusive, 
the  threads  are  drawn  together  with  too  much  evidence 
of  preoccupation.  The  impression  is  not  so  much  of  a 
true  tale  told  as  of  an  extraordinary  situation  frigidly 
written  up  to  and  accounted  for.  In  each  case  a  certain 
social  condition  is  described  at  the  beginning,  and  a 
totally  opposite  condition  is  discovered  at  the  end  of 
the  story.  We  are  tempted  to  beheve  that  the  author 
determined  to  do  this,  to  turn  the  whole  box  of  bricks 
absolutely  topsy-turvy.  This  disregard  of  the  soft  and 
supple  contours  of  nature,  this  rugged  air  of  molten 
metal,  takes  away  from  the  pleasure  we  should  otherwise 
legitimately  receive  from  the  exhibition  of  so  much  fancy, 
so  much  knowledge,  so  many  proofs  of  observation. 


142  French   Profiles 

The  story  which  gives  its  name  to  the  book,  Le 
Capitaine  Burle,  is  perhaps  the  best,  because  it  has  least 
of  this  air  of  artifice.  In  a  miUtary  county  town,  a 
captain,  who  Hves  with  his  anxious  mother  and  his  httle, 
palhd,  motherless  son,  sinks  into  vicious  excesses,  and 
pilfers  from  the  regiment  to  pay  for  his  vices.  It  is  a 
great  object  with  the  excellent  major,  who  discovers 
this  condition,  to  save  his  friend  the  captain  in  some 
way  which  will  prevent  an  open  scandal,  and  leave  the 
child  free  for  ultimate  success  in  the  army.  After  trying 
every  method,  and  discovering  that  the  moral  nature  of 
the  captain  is  altogether  too  soft  and  too  far  sunken  to 
be  redeemed,  as  the  inevitable  hour  of  publicity  ap- 
proaches, the  major  insults  his  friend  in  a  cafe,  so  as  to 
give  him  an  opportunity  of  fighting  a  duel  and  dying 
honourably.  This  is  done,  and  the  scandal  is  evaded, 
without,  however,  any  good  being  thereby  secured  to 
the  family,  for  the  little  boy  dies  of  weakness  and  his 
grandmother  starves.  Still,  the  name  of  Burle  has  not 
been  dragged  through  the  mud. 

Zola  has  rarely  displayed  the  quality  of  humour,  but 
it  is  present  in  the  story  called  La  Fete  a  Coqueville. 
Coqueville  is  the  name  given  to  a  very  remote  Norman 
fishing-village,  set  in  a  gorge  of  rocks,  and  almost  in- 
accessible except  from  the  sea.  Here  a  sturdy  popu- 
lation of  some  hundred  and  eighty  souls,  all  sprung 
from  one  or  other  of  two  rival  families,  live  in  the 
condition  of  a  tiny  Verona,  torn  between  contending 
interests.  A  ship  laden  with  liqueurs  is  wrecked  on  the 
rocks  outside,  and  one  precious  cask  after  another  comes 
riding  into  Coqueville  over  the  breakers.  The  villagers, 
to  whom  brandy  itself  has  hitherto  been  the  rarest  of 
luxuries,  spend  a  glorious  week  of  perfumed  inebriety, 
sucking  sphnters  that  drip  with  benedictine,  catching 


Zola  143 

noyau  in  iron  cups,  and  supping  up  cura9ao  from  the 
bottom  of  a  boat.  Upon  this  happy  shore  chartreuse 
flows  hke  cider,  and  trappistine  is  drunk  out  of  a  mug. 
The  rarest  drinks  of  the  world — Chios  mastic  and 
Servian  sHwowitz,  Jamaica  rum  and  arrack,  creme  de 
moka  and  raki  drip  among  the  mackerel  nets  and  deluge 
the  seaweed.  In  the  presence  of  this  extraordinary 
and  fantastic  bacchanal  all  the  disputes  of  the  rival 
families  are  forgotten,  class  prejudices  are  drowned, 
and  the  mayor's  rich  daughter  marries  the  poorest  of 
the  fisher-sons  of  the  enemy's  camp.  It  is  very  amus- 
ingly and  very  picturesquely  told,  but  spoiled  a  little  by 
Zola's  pet  sin — the  overcrowding  of  details,  the  theatrical 
completeness  and  orchestral  big-drum  of  the  final  scene. 
Too  many  barrels  of  liqueur  come  in,  the  village  becomes 
too  universally  drunk,  the  scene  at  last  becomes  too 
Lydian  for  credence. 

In  the  two  remaining  stories  of  this  collection — Pour 
une  Nuit  d' Amour  and  L'Inondation — the  fault  of 
mechanical  construction  is  still  more  plainly  obvious. 
Each  of  these  narratives  begins  with  a  carefully  accentu- 
ated picture  of  a  serene  life  :  in  the  first  instance,  that 
of  a  timid  lad  sequestered  in  a  country  town;  in  the 
second,  that  of  a  prosperous  farmer,  surrounded  by  his 
family  and  enjoying  all  the  delights  of  material  and  moral 
success.  In  each  case  this  serenity  is  but  the  prelude  to 
events  of  the  most  appalling  tragedy — a  tragedy  which 
does  not  merely  strike  or  wound,  but  positively  annihi- 
lates. The  story  called  L'Inondation,  which  describes 
the  results  of  a  bore  on  the  Garonne,  would  be  as  pathetic 
as  it  is  enthralling,  exciting,  and  effective,  if  the  destruc- 
tion were  not  so  absolutely  complete,  if  the  persons  so 
carefully  enumerated  at  the  opening  of  the  piece  were 
not  all  of  them  sacrificed,  and,  as  in  the  once  popular 


144  French   Profiles 

song  called  "  An  'Orrible  Tale,"  each  by  some  different 
death  of  pecuhar  ingenuity.  As  to  Pour  une  Nuit 
d' Amour,  it  is  not  needful  to  do  more  than  say  that  it 
is  one  of  the  most  repulsive  productions  ever  published 
by  its  author,  and  a  vivid  exception  to  the  general 
innocuous  character  of  his  short  stories. 

No  little  interest,  to  the  practical  student  of  literature, 
attaches  to  the  fact  that  in  L'Inondation  Zola  is  really 
re-writing,  in  a  more  elaborate  form,  the  fourth  section 
of  his  Jean  Gourdon.  Here,  as  there,  a  farmer  who  has 
hved  in  the  greatest  prosperity,  close  to  a  great  river,  is 
stripped  of  everything — of  his  house,  his  wealth,  and 
his  family — by  a  sudden  rising  of  the  waters.  It  is 
unusual  for  an  author  thus  to  re-edit  a  work,  or  tell  the 
same  tale  a  second  time  at  fuller  length,  but  the  sequences 
of  incidents  will  be  found  to  be  closely  identical,  although 
the  later  is  by  far  the  larger  and  the  more  populous 
story.  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  the  technical  student 
to  compare  the  two  pieces,  the  composition  of  which 
was  separated  by  about  ten  years. 


Finally,  in  1884,  Zola  published  a  fourth  collection, 
named,  after  the  first  of  the  series,  Ndis  Micoulin. 
This  volume  contained  in  all  six  stories,  each  of  con- 
siderable extent.  I  do  not  propose  to  dwell  at  any 
length  on  the  contents  of  this  book,  partly  because  they 
belong  to  the  finished  period  of  naturalism,  and  seem 
more  like  castaway  fragments  of  the  Rougon-Macquart 
epos  than  hke  independent  creations,  but  also  because 
they  clash  with  the  picture  I  have  sought  to  draw  of  an 
optimistic  and  romantic  Zola  returning  from  time  to 
time  to  the  short  story  as  a  shelter  from  his  theories. 


Zola  145 

Of  these  tales,  one  or  two  are  trifling  and  passably 
insipid ;  the  Parisian  sketches  called  Nantas  and  Madame 
Neigon  have  little  to  be  said  in  favour  of  their  existence. 
Here  Zola  seems  desirous  to  prove  to  us  that  he  could 
write  as  good  Octave  Feuillet,  if  he  chose,  as  the  author 
of  Monsieur  de  Cantors  himself.  In  Les  Coquillages  de 
M.  Chabre,  which  I  confess  I  read  when  it  first  appeared, 
and  have  now  re-read  with  amusement,  we  see  the  heavy 
Zola  endeavouring  to  sport  as  gracefully  as  M.  de 
Maupassant,  and  in  the  same  style.  The  impression 
of  buoyant  Atlantic  seas  and  hollow  caverns  is  well 
rendered  in  this  most  unedif5dng  story.  Nai's  Micoulin, 
which  gives  its  name  to  the  book,  is  a  disagreeable  tale 
of  seduction  and  revenge  in  Provence,  narrated  with  the 
usual  ponderous  conscientiousness.  In  each  of  the  last 
mentioned  the  background  of  landscape  is  so  vivid  that 
we  half  forgive  the  faults  of  the  narrative. 

The  two  remaining  stories  in  the  book  are  more  re- 
markable, and  one  of  them,  at  least,  is  of  positive  value. 
It  is  curious  that  in  La  Mori  d'Olivier  Becailles  and 
Jacques  Damour  Zola  should  in  the  same  volume  present 
versions  of  the  Enoch  Arden  story,  the  now  familiar 
episode  of  the  man  who  is  supposed  to  be  dead,  and 
comes  back  to  find  his  wife  re-married.  Olivier  Becaille 
is  a  poor  clerk,  lately  arrived  in  Paris  with  his  wife ;  he 
is  in  wretched  health,  and  has  always  been  subject  to 
cataleptic  seizures.  In  one  of  these  he  falls  into  a  state 
of  syncope  so  prolonged  that  they  believe  him  to  be 
dead,  and  bury  him.  He  manages  to  break  out  of  his 
coffin  in  the  cemetery,  and  is  picked  up  fainting  by  a 
philanthropic  doctor.  He  has  a  long  illness,  at  the  end 
of  which  he  cannot  discover  what  has  become  of  his 
wife.  After  a  long  search,  he  finds  that  she  has  married 
a  very  excellent  young  fellow,  a  neighbour ;   and  in  the 

L 


146  French   Profiles 

face  of  her  happiness,  Olivier  Becaille  has  not  the  courage 
to  disturb  her.  Like  Tennyson's  "  strong,  heroic  soul," 
he  passes  out  into  the  silence  and  the  darkness. 

The  exceedingly  powerful  story  called  Jacques  Damour 
treats  the  same  idea,  but  with  far  greater  mastery,  and 
in  a  less  conventional  manner.  Jacques  Damour  is  a 
Parisian  artisan,  who  becomes  demoralised  during  the 
siege,  and  joins  the  Commune.  He  is  captured  by  the 
Versailles  army,  and  sentenced  to  penal  servitude  in 
New  Caledonia,  leaving  a  wife  and  a  little  girl  behind 
him  in  Paris.  After  some  years,  in  company  with  two 
or  three  other  convicts,  he  makes  an  attempt  to  escape. 
He,  in  fact,  succeeds  in  escaping,  with  one  companion, 
the  rest  being  drowned  before  they  get  out  of  the  colony. 
One  of  the  dead  men  being  mistaken  for  him,  Jacques 
Damour  is  reported  home  deceased.  When,  after 
credible  adventures,  and  at  the  declaration  of  the 
amnesty,  he  returns  to  Paris,  his  wife  and  daughter  have 
disappeared.  At  length  he  finds  the  former  married  to  a 
prosperous  butcher  in  the  Batignolles,  and  he  summons 
up  courage,  egged  on  by  a  rascally  friend,  to  go  to  the 
shop  in  midday  and  claim  his  lawful  wife.  The  suc- 
cessive scenes  in  the  shop,  and  the  final  one,  in  which 
the  ruddy  butcher,  sure  of  his  advantage  over  this 
squaUd  and  prematurely  wasted  ex-convict,  bids  FeUcie 
take  her  choice,  are  superb.  Zola  has  done  nothing 
more  forcible  or  life-like.  The  poor  old  Damour  retires, 
but  he  still  has  a  daughter  to  discover.  The  finale  of  the 
tale  is  excessively  unfitted  for  the  young  person,  and  no 
serious  critic  could  do  otherwise  than  blame  it.  But,  at 
the  same  time,  I  am  hardened  enough  to  admit  that  I 
think  it  very  true  to  life  and  not  a  little  humorous,  which, 
I  hope,  is  not  equivalent  to  a  moral  commendation.  We 
may,  if  we  like,  wish  that  Zola  had  never  written  Jacques 


Zola  1 47 

Damour,  but  nothing  can  prevent  it  from  being  a 
superbly  constructed  and  supported  piece  of  narrative, 
marred  by  unusually  few  of  the  mechanical  faults  of  his 
later  work. 

The  consideration  of  the  optimistic  and  sometimes 
even  sentimental  short  stories  of  Zola  helps  to  reveal 
to  a  candid  reader  the  undercurrent  of  pity  which  exists 
even  in  the  most  "  naturalistic  "  of  his  romances.  It 
cannot  be  too  often  insisted  upon  that,  although  he  tried 
to  write  books  as  scientific  as  anything  by  Pasteur  or 
Claude  Bernard,  he  simply  could  not  do  it.  His  innate 
romanticism  would  break  through,  and,  for  all  his 
efforts,  it  made  itself  apparent  even  when  he  strove  with 
the  greatest  violence  to  conceal  it.  In  his  contes  he 
does  not  try  to  fight  against  his  native  idealism,  and 
they  are,  in  consequence,  perhaps  the  most  genuinely 
characteristic  productions  of  his  pen  which  exist. 

1892. 


FERDINAND    FABRE 


FERDINAND    FABRE 

On  the  nth  of  February,  1898,  carried  off  by  a  brief 
attack  of  pneumonia,  one  of  the  most  original  of  the 
contemporary  writers  of  France  passed  away  almost  un- 
observed. All  his  life  through,  the  actions  of  Ferdinand 
Fabre  were  inopportune,  and  certainly  so  ambitious  an 
author  should  not  have  died  in  the  very  central  heat 
of  the  Zola  trial.  He  was  just  going  to  be  elected, 
moreover,  into  the  French  Academy.  After  several 
misunderstandings  and  two  rebuffs,  he  was  safe  at  last. 
He  was  standing  for  the  chair  of  Meilhac,  and  "  sur  de 
son  affaire."  For  a  very  long  while  the  Academy  had 
looked  askance  at  Fabre,  in  spite  of  his  genius  and  the 
purity  of  his  books.  His  attitude  seemed  too  much  like 
that  of  an  unfrocked  priest ;  he  dealt  with  the  world  of 
religion  too  intimately  for  one  who  stood  quite  outside. 
Years  ago.  Cardinal  Perraud  is  reported  to  have  said, 
"  I  may  go  as  far  as  Loti — but  as  far  as  Fabre,  never  !  " 
Yet  every  one  gave  way  at  last  to  the  gentle  charm  of 
the  Cevenol  novelist.  Taine  and  Renan  had  been  his 
supporters;  a  later  generation,  MM.  Halevy,  Claretie, 
and  Jules  Lemaitre  in  particular,  were  now  his  ardent 
friends.  The  Cardinals  were  appeased,  and  the  author 
of  L'Abbe  Tigrane  was  to  be  an  Immortal  at  last. 
Ferdinand  Fabre  would  not  have  been  himself  if  he 
had  not  chosen  that  moment  for  the  date  of  his  decease. 
All  his  life  through  he  was  isolated,  a  Uttle  awkward,  not 
in  the  central  stream ;  but  for  all  that  his  was  a  talent 
so  riiarked  and  so  individual  that  it  came  scarcely  short 

151 


152  French  Profiles 

of  genius.  Taine  said  long  ago  that  one  man,  and  one 
man  only,  had  in  these  recent  years  understood  the  soul 
of  the  average  French  priest,  and  that  one  man  was 
Ferdinand  Fabre.  He  cared  little  for  humanity  unless 
it  wore  a  cassock,  but,  if  it  did,  his  study  of  its  peculiari- 
ties was  absolutely  untiring.  His  books  are  galleries  of 
the  portraits  of  priests,  and  he  is  to  French  fiction  what 
Zurbaran  is  to  Spanish  painting. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  was  born  in  1830  at  Bedarieux,  in 
the  Herault,  that  department  which  hes  between  the 
southern  masses  of  the  Cevennes  Mountains  and  the 
lagoons  of  the  Mediterranean.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
exquisite  districts  in  France;  just  above  Bedarieux, 
the  great  moors  or  garrigues  begin  to  rise,  and  brilhant 
little  rivers,  the  Orb  and  its  tributaries,  wind  and  dash 
between  woodland  and  meadow,  hurrying  to  the  hot 
plains  and  the  fiery  Gulf  of  Lyons.  But,  up  there  in 
the  Espinouze,  all  is  crystal-fresh  and  dewy-cool,  a  mild 
mountain-country  positively  starred  with  churches, 
since  if  this  is  one  of  the  poorest  it  is  certainly  one  of 
the  most  pious  parts  of  France.  This  zone  of  broken 
moorland  along  the  north-western  edge  of  the  Herault 
is  Fabre's  province;  it  belongs  to  him  as  the  Berry 
belongs  to  George  Sand  or  Dorsetshire  to  Mr.  Hardy. 
He  is  its  discoverer,  its  panegyrist,  its  satirist.  It  was 
as  Uttle  known  to  Frenchmen,  when  he  began  to  write, 
as  Patagonia ;  and  in  volume  after  volume  he  has  made 
them  famihar  with  its  scenery  and  its  population.  For 
most  French  readers  to-day,  the  Lower  Cevennes  are 
what  Ferdinand  Fabre  has  chosen  to  represent  them. 

When  the  boy  was  born,  his  father  was  a  successful 
local  architect,  who  had  taken  advantage  of  a  tide  of 


Ferdinand  Fabre  153 

prosperity  which,  on  the  revival  of  the  cloth-trade,  was 
sweeping  into  Bedarieux,  to  half-rebuild  the  town. 
But  the  elder  Fabre  was  tempted  by  his  success  to  enter 
into  speculations  which  were  unlucky;  and,  in  par- 
ticular, a  certain  too  ambitious  high-road  (often  to  be 
mentioned  in  his  son's  novels),  between  Agde  on  the  sea 
and  Castres  on  the  farther  side  of  the  mountains,  com- 
pleted his  ruin.  In  1842,  when  the  boy  was  twelve,  the 
family  were  on  the  brink  of  bankruptcy.  His  uncle, 
the  Abbe  Fulcran  Fabre,  priest  of  the  neighbouring 
parish  of  Camplong,  offered  to  take  Ferdinand  to  himself 
for  awhile.  In  Ma  Vocation  the  novelist  has  given  an 
enchanting  picture  of  how  his  uncle  fetched  him  on  foot, 
and  led  him,  without  a  word,  through  almond  planta- 
tions thronged  with  thrushes  and  over  brawhng  water- 
courses, till  they  reached  an  open  httle  wood  in  sight 
of  the  moors,  where  Ferdinand  was  allowed  to  feast  upon 
mulberries,  while  Uncle  Fulcran  touched,  for  the  first 
time,  on  the  delicate  question  whether  his  httle  garrulous 
nephew  had  or  had  not  a  call  to  the  priesthood.  Uncle 
Fulcran  Fabre  is  a  type  which  recurs  in  every  novel  that 
Ferdinand  afterwards  wrote.  Sometimes,  as  in  Mon 
Oncle  Celestin,  he  has  practically  the  whole  book  to  him- 
self;  more  often  he  is  a  secondary  character.  But  he 
was  a  perpetual  model  to  his  nephew,  and  whenever  a 
naif,  devoted  country  priest  or  an  eccentric  and  holy 
professor  of  ecclesiastical  history  was  needed  for  fore- 
ground or  background,  the  memory  of  Uncle  Fulcran 
was  always  ready. 

The  "  vocation  "  takes  a  great  place  in  all  the  psycho- 
logical struggles  of  Ferdinand  Fabre's  heroes.  It 
offers,  indeed,  the  difficulty  which  must  inevitably  rise 
in  the  breast  of  every  generous  and  rehgious  youth  who 
feels  drawn  to  adopt  the  service  of  the  Catholic  Church. 


1 54  French   Profiles 

How  is  he  to  know  whether  this  enthusiasm  which  rises 
in  his  soul,  this  rapture,  this  devotion,  is  the  veritable 
and  enduring  fragrance  of  Lebanon,  the  all-needful 
odor  suavitatis  ?  This  doubt  long  harassed  the  breast 
of  Ferdinand  Fabre  himself.  In  that  poor  country  of 
the  Cevennes,  to  have  the  care  of  a  parish,  to  be  sheltered 
by  a  preshyUre — by  a  parsonage  or  manse,  as  we  should 
say — ^is  to  have  settled  very  comfortably  the  problem 
of  subsistence.  The  manse  will  shelter  a  mother,  at 
need  a  sister  or  an  aged  father ;  it  reconstructs  a  home 
for  such  a  shattered  family  as  the  Fabres  were  now. 
Great,  though  unconscious,  pressure  was  therefore  put 
upon  the  lad  to  make  inevitable  his  "  vocation."  He 
was  sent  to  the  Little  Seminary  at  St.  Pons  de  Thomieres, 
where  he  was  educated  under  M.  I'Abbe  Dubreuil,  a  man 
whose  ambitions  were  at  once  lettered  and  ecclesiastical, 
and  who,  although  Director  of  the  famous  Academie 
des  Jeux  Floraux,  eventually  rose  to  be  Archbishop  of 
Avignon. 

During  this  time,  at  the  urgent  request  of  his  uncle 
at  Camplong,  Ferdinand  Fabre  kept  a  daily  journal. 
It  was  started  in  the  hope  that  cultivating  the  expres- 
sion of  pious  sentiments  might  make  their  ebullition 
spontaneous,  but  the  boy  soon  began  to  jot  down, 
instead  of  pious  ejaculations,  all  the  external  things  he 
noticed  :  the  birds  in  the  copses,  the  talk  of  the  neigh- 
bours, even  at  last  the  oddities  and  the  disputes  of  the 
excellent  clergymen  his  schoolmasters.  When  the  Abb6 
Fulcran  died  in  1871,  his  papers  were  burned  and  most 
of  Ferdinand's  journals  with  them ;  but  the  latest  and 
therefore  most  valuable  cahier  survived,  and  is  the 
source  from  which  he  extracted  that  absorbingly  interest- 
ing fragment  of  autobiography.  Ma  Vocation,  This 
shows  us  why,  in  spite  of  all  the  pressure  of  his  people. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  155 

and  in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  his  amiable  professors 
at  the  Great  Seminary  of  MontpeUier,  the  natural  man 
was  too  strong  in  Ferdinand  Fabre  to  permit  him  to  take 
the  final  vows.  In  his  nineteenth  year,  on  the  night  of 
the  23rd  of  June  1848,  after  an  agony  of  prayer,  he  had 
a  vision  in  his  cell.  A  great  hght  filled  the  room;  he 
saw  heaven  opened,  and  the  Son  of  God  at  the  right  hand 
of  the  Father.  He  approached  in  worship,  but  a  wind 
howled  him  out  of  heaven,  and  a  sovereign  voice  cried, 
"  It  is  not  the  will  of  God  that  thou  shouldst  be  a  priest." 
He  rose  up,  calm  though  broken-hearted;  as  soon  as 
morning  broke,  without  hesitation  he  wrote  his  decision 
to  his  family,  and  of  the  "  vocation  "  of  Ferdinand  Fabre 
there  was  an  end. 

There  could  be  no  question  of  the  sincerity  of  a  life 
so  begun,  although  from  the  very  first  there  may  be 
traced  in  it  an  element  of  incompatibihty,  of  gaucherie. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  clerical  novels  of  Fabre, 
they  are  at  least  built  out  of  a  loving  experience.  And, 
in  1889,  replying  to  some  accuser,  he  employed  words 
which  must  be  quoted  here,  for  they  are  essential  to  a 
comprehension  of  the  man  and  his  work.  They  were 
addressed  to  his  wife,  dilectce  uxori,  and  they  take  a 
double  pathos  from  this  circumstance.  They  are  the 
words  of  the  man  who  had  laid  his  hand  to  the  plough, 
and  had  turned  away  because  life  was  too  sweet : — 

"  Je  ne  suis  pas  all6  k  r;6gUse  de  propos  d6hbere  pour 
la  peindre  et  pour  la  juger,  encore  moins  pour  faire  d'elle 
metier  et  marchandise;  I'^^gHse  est  venue  k  moi,  s'est 
impos6e  k  moi  par  la  force  d'une  longue  frequentation, 
par  les  emotions  poignantes  de  ma  jeunesse,  par  un  goiit 
tenace  de  mon  esprit,  ouvert  de  bonne  heure  k  elle,  k 
elle  seule,  et  j'ai  ecrit  tout  de  long  de  I'aune,  naive- 
ment.  .  .  .  Je  demeurais  confine  dans  mon  coin  etroit. 


156  French  Profiles 

dans  mon  '  diocese,'  comme  aurait  dit  Sainte-Beuve. 
.  ,  .  De  la  une  s6rie  de  livres  sur  les  desservants,  les 
cures,  les  chanoines,  les  eveques." 

But  if  the  Church  was  to  be  his  theme  and  his  obses- 
sion, there  was  something  else  in  the  blood  of  Ferdinand 
Fabre.  There  was  the  balsam-laden  atmosphere  of  the 
great  moorlands  of  the  Cevennes.  At  first  it  seemed 
as  though  he  were  to  be  torn  away  from  this  natural 
perfume  no  less  than  from  the  odour  of  incense.  He 
was  sent,  after  attempting  the  study  of  medicine  at 
Montpellier,  to  Paris,  where  he  was  articled  as  clerk  to 
a  lawyer.  The  oppression  of  an  office  was  intolerable 
to  him,  and  he  broke  away,  trying,  as  so  many  thousands 
do,  to  make  a  hving  by  journalism,  by  the  untrained  and 
unaccomplished  pen.  In  1853  he  pubhshed  the  inevit- 
able volume  of  verses,  Les  Feuilles  de  Lierre.  It  seemed 
at  first  as  if  these  neglected  ivy-leaves  would  cover  the 
poor  lad's  coffin,  for,  under  poverty  and  privation,  his 
health  completely  broke  down.  He  managed  to  creep 
back  to  Bedarieux,  and  in  the  air  of  the  moors  he  soon 
recovered.  But  how  he  occupied  himself  during  the 
next  eight  or  ten  years  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
recorded.  His  life  was  probably  a  very  idle  one ;  with 
a  loaf  of  bread  and  a  cup  of  wine  beneath  the  bough, 
youth  passes  merrily  and  cheaply  in  that  delicious 
country  of  the  Herault. 

In  the  sixties  he  reappeared  in  Paris,  and  at  the  age 
of  thirty-two,  in  1862,  he  brought  out  his  first  novel, 
Les  Courbezon :  Scenes  de  la  Vie  Clericale.  George 
Ehot's  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  had  appeared  a  few  years 
earlier;  the  new  French  novelist  resembled  her  less 
than  he  did  Anthony  Trollope,  to  whom,  with  consider- 
able clairvoyance,  M.  Amedee  Pichot  immediately  com- 
pared him.     In  spite  of  the  limited  interests  involved 


Ferdinand  Fabre  i  5'7 

and  the  rural  crudity  of  the  scene — the  book  was  all 
about  the  life  of  country  priests  in  the  Cevennes — 
Les  Courhezon  achieved  an  instant  success.  It  was 
crowned  by  the  French  Academy,  it  was  praised  by 
George  Sand,  it  was  carefully  reviewed  by  Sainte-Beuve, 
who  called  the  author  "  the  strongest  of  the  disciples  of 
Balzac."  Ferdinand  Fabre  had  begun  his  career,  and 
was  from  this  time  forth  a  steady  and  sturdy  constructor 
of  prose  fiction.  About  twenty  volumes  bear  his  name 
on  their  title-pages.  In  1883  he  succeeded  Jules  Sandeau 
as  curator  of  the  Mazarin  Library,  and  in  that  capacity 
inhabited  a  pleasant  suite  of  rooms  in  the  Institute, 
where  he  died.  There  are  no  other  mile-stones  in  the 
placid  roadway  of  his  life  except  the  dates  of  the  most 
important  of  his  books:  Le  Chevrier,  1867;  L'Abhe 
Tigrane,  1873 ;  Barnahe,  1875 ;  Mon  Oncle  Celestin, 
1881;  Lucifer,  1884;  and  L'Abbe  Roitelet,  1890.  At 
the  time  of  his  death,  I  understand,  he  was  at  work  on 
a  novel  called  Le  Bercail,  of  which  only  a  fragment  was 
completed.  Few  visitors  to  Paris  saw  him;  he  loved 
solitude  and  was  shy.  But  he  is  described  as  very  genial 
and  smiling,  eager  to  please,  with  a  certain  prelatical 
unction  of  manner  recaUing  the  Seminary  after  half  a 
century  of  separation. 

II 

The  novels  of  Ferdinand  Fabre  have  one  signal  merit : 
they  are  entirely  unUke  those  of  any  other  writer ;  but 
they  have  one  equally  signal  defect — they  are  terribly 
like  one  another.  Those  who  read  a  book  of  his  for  the 
first  time  are  usually  highly  dehghted,  but  they  make  a 
mistake  if  they  immediately  read  another.  Criticism, 
dealing  broadly  with  Ferdinand  Fabre,  and  anxious  to 
insist  on  the  recognition  of  his  great  merits,  is  wise  if 


158  French  Profiles 

it  concedes  at  once  the  fact  of  his  monotony.  Certain 
things  and  people — most  of  them  to  be  found  within 
five  miles  of  his  native  town — interested  him,  and  he 
produced  fresh  combinations  of  these.  Without  ever 
entirely  repeating  himself,  he  produced,  especially  in 
his  later  writings,  an  unfortunate  impression  of  having 
told  us  all  that  before.  Nor  was  he  merely  monotonous ; 
he  was  unequal.  Some  of  his  stories  were  much  better 
constructed  and  even  better  than  others.  It  is  therefore 
needless,  and  would  be  wearisome,  to  go  through  the 
list  of  his  twenty  books  here.  I  shall  merely  endeavour 
to  present  to  English  readers,  who  are  certainly  not 
duly  cognisant  of  a  very  charming  and  sympathetic 
novelist,  those  books  of  Fabre's  which,  I  beheve,  will 
most  thoroughly  reward  attention. 

By  universal  consent  the  best  of  all  Fabre's  novels  is 
L'Abbe  Tigrane,  Candidal  a  la  Papaute.  It  is,  in  all  the 
more  solid  and  durable  qualities  of  composition,  un- 
questionably among  the  best  European  novels  of  the  last 
thirty  years.  It  is  as  interesting  to-day  as  it  was  when 
it  first  appeared.  I  read  it  then  with  rapture,  I  have 
just  laid  it  down  again  with  undiminished  admiration. 
It  is  so  excellently  balanced  and  moulded  that  it  posi- 
tively does  its  author  an  injury,  for  the  reader  cannot 
resist  asking  why,  since  L'Abbe  Tigrane  is  so  brilliantly 
constructed,  are  the  other  novels  of  Fabre,  with  all  their 
agreeable  qualities,  so  manifestly  inferior  to  it  ?  And 
to  this  question  there  is  no  reply,  except  to  say  that  on 
one  solitary  occasion  the  author  of  very  pleasant,  char- 
acteristic and  notable  books,  which  were  not  quite 
masterpieces,  shot  up  in  the  air  and  became  a  writer 
almost  of  the  first  class.  I  hardly  know  whether  it  is 
worth  while  to  observe  that  the  scene  of  L'Abbe  Tigrane, 
although   analogous   to    that   which   Fabre    elsewhere 


Ferdinand  Fabre  159 

portrayed,  was  not  identical  with  it,  and  perhaps  this 
slight  detachment  from  his  beloved  C^vennes  gave  the 
novelist  a  seeming  touch  of  freedom. 

The  historical  conditions  which  give  poignancy  of 
interest  to  the  ecclesiastical  novels  of  Ferdinand  Fabre 
are  the  re-assertion  in  France  of  the  monastic  orders 
proscribed  by  the  Revolution,  and  the  opposition  offered 
to  them  by  the  parochial  clergy.  The  battle  which 
rages  in  these  stormy  books  is  that  between  Roman 
and  Galilean  ambition.  The  names  of  Lacordaire  and 
Lamennais  are  scarcely  mentioned  in  the  pages  of  Fabre,^ 
but  the  study  of  their  lives  forms  an  excellent  preparation 
for  the  enjoyment  of  stories  like  L'Abbe  Tigrane  and 
Lucifer.  The  events  which  thrilled  the  Church  of  France 
about  the  year  1840,  the  subjection  of  the  prelates  to 
Roman  authority,  the  hostility  of  the  Government,  the 
resistance  here  and  there  of  an  ambitious  and  head- 
strong Galilean — all  this  must  in  some  measure  be 
recollected  to  make  the  intrinsic  purpose  of  Fabre's 
novels,  which  Taine  has  qualified  as  indispensable  to 
the  historian  of  modern  France,  intelligible.  If  we 
recollect  Archbishop  de  Quelen  and  his  protection  of  the 
Peregrine  Brethren;  if  we  think  of  Lacordaire  (on  the 
i2th  of  February  1841)  mounting  the  pulpit  of  Notre- 
Dame  in  the  forbidden  white  habit  of  St.  Dominic;  if 
we  recall  the  turmoil  which  preceded  the  arrival  of 
Monseigneur  Affre  at  Paris,  we  shall  find  ourselves  pre- 
pared by  historic  experience  for  the  curious  ambitions 
and  excitements  which  animate  the  clerical  novels  of 
Fabre. 

The  devout  little  city  of  Lormieres,  where  the  scene 

^  I  should  except  the  curious  anecdote  of  the  asceticism  of 
Lamennais  which  is  told  by  the  arch-priest  Rupert  in  the  six- 
teenth chapter  of  Lucifer. 


i6o  French   Profiles 

of  L'Abbe  Tigrane  is  laid,  is  a  sort  of  clerical  ante- 
chamber to  Paradise.  It  stands  in  a  wild  defile  of  the 
Eastern  Pyrenees,  somewhere  between  Toulouse  and 
Perpignan ;  it  is  not  the  capital  of  a  department,  but  a 
little  stronghold  of  ancient  rehgion,  left  untouched  in  its 
poverty  and  its  devotion,  overlooked  in  the  general 
redistribution  of  dioceses.  The  Abbe  Rufin  Capdepont, 
about  the  year  1866,  finds  himself  Vicar-General  of  its 
Cathedral  Church  of  St.  Irenee ;  he  is  a  fierce,  domineer- 
ing man,  some  fifty  years  of  age,  devoured  by  ambition 
and  eating  his  heart  out  in  this  forgotten  comer  of 
Christendom.  He  is  by  conviction,  but  still  more  by 
temper,  a  Gallican  of  the  Galileans,  and  his  misery  is  to 
see  the  principles  of  the  Concordat  gradually  being 
swept  away  by  the  tide  of  the  Orders  setting  in  from 
Rome.  The  present  Bishop  of  Lormieres,  M.  de  Roque- 
brun,  is  a  charming  and  courtly  person,  but  he  is  under 
the  thumb  of  the  Regulars,  and  gives  all  the  offices  which 
fall  vacant  to  Dominicans  or  Lazarists.  He  is  twenty 
years  older  than  Rufin  Capdepont,  who  has  determined 
to  succeed  him,  but  whom  every  year  of  delay  embitters 
and  disheartens. 

Rufin  Capdepont  is  built  in  the  mould  of  the  un- 
scrupulous conquerors  of  life.  The  son  of  a  peasant 
of  the  Pyrenees  and  of  a  Basque-Spanish  mother,  he  is 
a  creature  like  a  tiger,  all  sinuosity  and  sleekness  when 
things  go  well,  but  ready  in  a  moment  to  show  claws  and 
fangs  on  the  shghtest  opposition,  and  to  stir  with  a  roar 
that  cows  the  forest.  His  rude  violence,  his  GaUican- 
ism,  the  hatred  he  inspires,  the  absence  of  spiritual 
unction — all  these  make  his  chances  of  promotion 
rarer;  on  the  other  side  are  ranked  his  magnificent 
intellect,  his  swift  judgment,  his  absolutely  imperial 
confidence  in  himself,  and  his  vigilant  activity.     When 


Ferdinand  Fabre  i6i 

they  remind  him  of  his  mean  origin,  he  remembers  that 
Pope  John  XXII.  was  humbly  born  hard  by  at  Cahors, 
and  that  Urban  IV.  was  the  son  of  a  cobbler  at  Troyes. 

What  the  episcopate  means  to  an  ambitious  priest 
is  constantly  impressed  on  his  readers  by  Ferdinand 
Fabre.  Yesterday,  a  private  soldier  in  an  army  of  one 
hundred  thousand  men,  the  bishop  is  to-day  a  general, 
grandee  of  the  Holy  Roman  Church,  received  ad  limina 
apostolorum  as  a  sovereign,  and  by  the  Pope  as  "  Vener- 
able Brother."  As  this  ineffable  prize  seems  slipping 
from  the  grasp  of  Rufin  Capdepont,  his  violence  becomes 
insupportable.  At  school  his  tyranny  had  gained  him 
the  nickname  of  Tigranes,  from  his  likeness  to  the 
Armenian  tyrant  king  of  kings;  now  to  all  the  chapter 
and  diocese  of  Lormieres  he  is  I'Abbe  Tigrane,  a  name 
to  frighten  children  with.  At  last,  after  a  wild  en- 
counter, his  insolence  brings  on  an  attack  of  apoplexy 
in  the  bishop,  and  the  hour  of  success  or  final  failure 
seems  approaching.  But  the  bishop  recovers,  and  in 
a  scene  absolutely  admirable  in  execution  contrives  to 
turn  a  pubhc  ceremony,  carefully  prepared  by  Capde- 
pont to  humiliate  him,  into  a  splendid  triumph.  The 
bishop,  still  illuminated  with  the  prestige  of  this  coup, 
departs  for  Rome  in  the  company  of  his  beloved 
secretary,  the  Abbe  Ternisien,  who  he  designs  shall 
succeed  him  in  the  diocese.  Capdepont  is  left  behind, 
wounded,  sulky,  hardly  approachable,  a  feline  monster 
who  has  missed  his  spring. 

But  from  Paris  comes  a  telegram  announcing  the 
sudden  death  of  Monsieur  de  Roquebrun,  and  Capde- 
pont, as  Vicar-General,  is  in  provisional  command  of  the 
diocese.  The  body  of  the  bishop  is  brought  back  to 
Lormieres,  but  Capdepont,  frenzied  with  hatred  and 
passion,  refuses  to  admit  it  to  the  cathedral.  The  Abbe 
M 


1 62  French  Profiles 

Ternisien,  however,  and  the  other  friends  of  the  last 
regime,  contrive  to  open  the  cathedral  at  dead  of  night, 
and  a  furtive  but  magnificent  ceremony  is  performed, 
under  the  roar  of  a  terrific  thunderstorm,  in  defiance  of 
the  wishes  of  Capdepont.  The  report  spreads  that  not 
he,  but  Ternisien,  is  to  be  bishop,  and  the  clergy  do  not 
conceal  their  joy.  But  the  tale  is  not  true;  Rome 
supports  the  strong  man,  the  priest  with  the  iron  hand, 
in  spite  of  his  scandalous  ferocity  and  his  Galhcan 
tendencies.  In  the  hour  of  his  sickening  suspense, 
Capdepont  has  acted  like  a  brute  and  a  maniac,  but 
with  the  dawning  of  success  his  tact  returns.  He 
excuses  his  violent  acts  as  the  result  of  illness;  he 
humbles  himself  to  the  beaten  party,  he  purrs  to  his 
clergy,  he  rubs  himself  like  a  great  cat  against  the 
comfortable  knees  of  Rome.  He  soon  rises  to  be  Arch- 
bishop, and  we  leave  him  walking  at  night  in  the  garden 
of  his  palace  and  thinking  of  the  Tiara.  "  Who  knows  ?  " 
with  a  dehrious  glitter  in  his  eyes,  "  who  knows  ?  " 

With  L'Ahhe  Tigrane  must  be  read  Lucifer,  which  is 
the  converse  of  the  picture.  In  Rufin  Capdepont  we 
see  the  culmination  of  personal  ambition  in  an  ecclesi- 
astic who  is  yet  devoted  through  the  inmost  fibres  of 
his  being  to  the  interests  of  the  Church.  In  the  story 
of  Bernard  Jourfier  we  follow  the  career  of  a  priest  who 
is  without  individual  ambition,  but  inspired  by  intense 
convictions  which  are  not  in  their  essence  clerical. 
Hence  Jourfier,  with  all  his  virtues,  fails,  while  Capde- 
pont, with  all  his  faults,  succeeds,  because  the  latter 
possesses,  while  the  former  does  not  possess,  the  "  voca- 
tion." Jourfier,  who  resembles  Capdepont  in  several, 
perhaps  in  too  many,  traits  of  character,  is  led  by  his 
indomitable  obstinacy  to  oppose  the  full  tide  of  the 
monastic  orders  covering  France  with  their  swarms. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  163 

We  are  made  to  feel  the  incumbrance  of  the  Congre- 
gations, their  elaborate  systems  of  espionage,  and  the 
insult  of  their  direct  appeal  to  Rome  over  the  heads  of 
the  bishops.  We  realise  how  intolerable  the  bondage 
of  the  Jesuits  must  have  been  to  an  independent  and 
somewhat  savage  Galilean  cleric  of  1845,  and  what 
opportunities  were  to  be  found  for  annoying  and 
depressing  him  if  he  showed  any  resistance. 

The  young  Abbe  Bernard  Jourfier  is  the  grandson 
and  the  son  of  men  who  took  a  prominent  part  in  the 
foundation  and  maintenance  of  the  First  Republic. 
Although  he  himself  has  gone  into  the  Church,  he 
retains  an  extreme  pride  in  the  memory  of  the  Spartans  of 
his  family.  To  resist  the  pretensions  of  the  Regulars 
becomes  with  him  a  passion  and  a  duty,  and  for  express- 
ing these  views,  and  for  repulsing  the  advances  of 
Jesuits,  who  see  in  him  the  making  of  a  magnificent 
preacher,  Jourfier  is  humiliated  and  hurt  by  being 
hurried  from  one  miserable  succursale  in  the  mountains 
to  another,  where  his  manse  is  a  cottage  in  some  rocky 
combe  (hke  the  Devonshire  "  coomb ").  At  last  his 
chance  comes  to  him ;  he  is  given  a  parish  in  the  lowest 
and  poorest  part  of  the  episcopal  city  of  Mireval.  Here 
his  splendid  gifts  as  an  orator  and  his  zeal  for  the  poor 
soon  make  him  prominent,  though  not  with  the  other 
clergy  popular.  His  appearance — ^his  forehead  broad 
like  that  of  a  young  bull,  his  great  brown  flashing  eyes, 
his  square  chin,  thick  neck  and  incomparable  voice — 
would  be  eminently  attractive  if  the  temper  of  the  man 
were  not  so  hard  and  repellent,  so  calculated  to  bruise 
such  softer  natures  as  come  in  his  way. 

The  reputation  of  Jourfier  grows  so  steadily,  that  the 
Chapter  is  unable  to  refuse  him  a  canon's  stall  in  the 
Cathedral  of  St.   Optat.     But  he  is  haunted  by  his 


164  French   Profiles 

mundane  devil,  the  voice  which  whispers  that,  with  all 
his  austerity,  chastity,  and  elevation  of  heart,  he  is  not 
truly  called  of  God  to  the  priesthood.  So  he  flings 
himself  into  ecclesiastical  history,  and  publishes  in 
successive  volumes  a  great  chronicle  of  the  Church, 
interpenetrated  by  Gallican  ideas,  and  breathing  from 
every  page  a  spirit  of  sturdy  independence  which,  though 
orthodox,  is  far  from  gratifying  Rome.  This  history  is 
rapidly  accepted  as  a  masterpiece  throughout  France, 
and  makes  him  universally  known.  Still  he  wraps  him- 
self in  his  isolation,  when  the  fall  of  the  Empire  suddenly 
calls  him  from  his  study,  and  he  has  to  prevent  the 
citizens  of  Mireval  from  wrecking  their  cathedral  and 
insulting  their  craven  bishop.  Gambetta,  who  knew  his 
father,  and  values  Jourfier  himself,  procures  that  he  shall 
be  appointed  Bishop  of  Sylvanes.  The  mitre,  so  passion- 
ately desired  by  Capdepont,  is  only  a  matter  of  terror 
and  distraction  to  Jourfier.  He  is  on  the  point  of  refus- 
ing it,  when  it  is  pointed  out  to  him  that  his  episcopal 
authority  will  enable  him  to  make  a  successful  stand 
against  the  Orders. 

This  decides  him,  and  he  goes  to  Sylvanes  to  be 
consecrated.  But  he  has  not  yet  been  preconised  by 
the  Pope,  and  he  makes  the  fatal  mistake  of  lingering 
in  his  diocese,  harassing  the  Congregations,  who  all 
denounce  him  to  the  Pope.  At  length,  in  deep  melan- 
choly and  failing  health,  he  sets  out  for  Rome,  and  is 
subjected  to  all  the  delays,  inconveniences,  and  petty 
humiliations  which  Rome  knows  how  to  inflict  on  those 
who  annoy  her.  The  Pope  sees  him,  but  without 
geniality;  he  has  to  endure  an  interview  with  the 
Prefect  of  the  Congregations,  Cardinal  Finella,  in  which 
the  pride  of  Lucifer  is  crushed  like  a  pebble  under  a 
hammer.     He  is  preconised,  but  in  the  most  scornful 


Ferdinand  Fabre  165 

way,  on  sufferance,  because  Rome  does  not  find  it  con- 
venient to  embroil  herself  with  the  French  Republic, 
and  he  returns,  a  broken  man,  to  Sylvan es.  Even  his 
dearest  friends,  the  amiable  and  charming  trio  of  Gallican 
canons,  who  have  followed  him  from  Mireval,  and  to 
find  offices  for  whom  he  has  roughly  displaced  Jesuit 
fathers,  find  the  bishop's  temper  intolerable.  His 
palace  is  built,  like  a  fortress,  on  a  rocky  eminence  over 
the  city,  and  one  wild  Christmas  night  the  body  of  the 
tormented  bishop  is  discovered,  crushed,  at  the  foot  of 
the  cliff,  whether  in  suicide  cast  over,  or  flung  by  a  false 
delirious  step  as  he  wandered  in  the  rain.  This  endless 
combat  with  the  Church  of  which  he  was  a  member,  had 
ended,  as  it  was  bound  to  end,  in  madness  and  despair. 
As  a  psychological  study  Lucifer  is  more  interesting, 
perhaps,  than  L'Ahhe  Tigrane,  because  more  complex, 
but  it  is  far  from  being  so  admirably  executed.  As  the 
story  proceeds,  Jourfier's  state  of  soul  somewhat  evades 
the  reader.  His  want  of  tact  in  dealing  with  his  diocese 
and  with  the  Pope  is  so  excessive  that  it  deprives  him 
of  our  sympathy,  and  internal  evidence  is  not  wanting 
to  show  that  Fabre,  having  brought  his  Gallican  professor 
of  history  to  the  prelacy,  did  not  quite  know  what  to  do 
with  him  then.  To  make  him  mad  and  tumble  him  over 
a  parapet  seems  inadequate  to  the  patient  reader,  who 
has  been  absorbed  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
problems  presented.  But  the  early  portions  of  the  book 
are  excellent  indeed.  Some  of  the  episodes  which  soften 
and  humanise  the  severity  of  the  central  interest  are 
charming;  the  career  of  Jourfier's  beloved  nephew,  the 
Abbe  Jean  Montagnol,  who  is  irresistibly  drawn  towards 
the  Jesuits,  and  at  last  is  positively  kidnapped  by  them 
from  the  clutches  of  his  terrible  uncle;  the  gentle  old 
archpriest  Rupert,  always  in  a  flutter  of  timidity,  yet 


1 66  French  Profiles 

with  the  loyalty  of  steel;  the  Canon  Coulazou,  who 
watches  Jourfier  with  the  devotion  of  a  dog  through  his 
long  misanthropic  trances;  these  turn  Lucifer  into  an 
enchanting  gallery  of  serious  clerical  portraits. 

Ill 

But  there  are  other  faces  in  the  priestly  portrait- 
gallery  which  Ferdinand  Fabre  has  painted,  and  some 
of  them  more  lovable  than  those  of  Tigrane  and  Lucifer. 
To  any  one  who  desires  an  easy  introduction  to  the 
noveUst,  no  book  can  be  more  warmly  recommended 
than  that  which  bears  the  title  of  L'Abbe  Roitelet,  or,  as 
we  might  put  it,  "  The  Rev.  Mr.  Wren  "  (1890).  Here 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  variety  of  those  poverty-stricken 
mountain  parishes,  starving  under  the  granite  peaks  of 
the  Cevennes,  which  Fabre  was  the  first  writer  of  the 
imagination  to  explore ;  groups  of  squalid  huts,  sprinkled 
and  tumbled  about  rocky  slopes,  hanging  perilously 
over  ravines  split  by  tumultuous  rivulets  that  race  in 
uproar  down  to  the  valleys  of  the  Orb  or  the  Tarn. 
Here  we  discover,  assiduously  but  wearily  devoted  to 
the  service  of  these  parched  communities,  the  Abbe 
Cyprien  Coupiac,  called  Roitelet,  or  the  Wren,  because 
he  is  the  smallest  priest  in  any  diocese  of  France.  This 
tiny  little  man,  a  peasant  in  his  simplicity  and  his  shy- 
ness, has  one  ungovernable  passion,  which  got  him  into 
trouble  in  his  student-days  at  Montpellier,  and  does 
his  reputation  wrong  even  among  the  rocks  of  the  black 
Espinouze  :  that  is  his  infatuation  for  all  kinds  of  birds. 
He  is  like  St.  Bonaventure,  who  loved  all  flying  things 
that  drink  the  light,  tor  em  bibentes  atque  lumen  ;  but  he 
goes  farther,  for  he  loves  them  to  the  neglect  of  his 
duties. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  167 

Complaints  are  made  of  Coupiac's  intense  devotion 
to  his  aviary,  and  he  is  rudely  moved  to  a  still  more 
distant  parish;  but  even  here  a  flight  of  what  seem  to 
be  Pallas's  sand-grouse  is  his  ruin.  He  is  summoned 
before  the  bishop  at  Montpellier,  and  thither  goes  the 
little  trembling  man,  a  mere  wren  of  humanity,  to 
excuse  himself  for  his  quaint  and  innocent  vice.  Happily, 
the  bishop  is  a  man  of  the  world,  less  narrow  than  his 
subalterns,  and  in  a  most  charming  scene  he  comforts 
the  little  ornithological  penitent,  and  even  brings  him 
dow^n  from  his  terrible  exile  among  the  rocks  to  a  small 
and  poor  but  genial  parish  in  the  chestnut  woodlands 
among  his  own  folk,  where  he  can  be  happy.  For  a 
while  the  Abbe  Coupiac  is  very  careful  to  avoid  all  Vogel- 
weiden  or  places  where  birds  do  congregate,  and  when 
he  meets  a  goldfinch  or  a  wryneck  is  most  particular  to 
look  in  the  opposite  direction ;  but  in  process  of  time  he 
succumbs,  and  his  manse  becomes  an  aviary,  like  its 
predecessors.  A  terrible  lesson  cures  the  poor  little 
man  at  last.  An  eagle  is  caught  alive  in  his  parish,  and 
he  cannot  resist  undertaking  to  cure  its  broken  wing. 
He  does  so,  and  with  such  success  that  he  loses  his 
heart  to  this  enormous  pet.  Alas  !  the  affection  is  not 
reciprocated,  and  one  morning,  without  any  warning, 
the  eagle  picks  out  one  of  the  abbe's  eyes.  With  some 
difficulty  Coupiac  is  safely  nursed  to  health  again,  but 
his  love  of  birds  is  gone. 

However,  it  is  his  nature,  shrinking  from  rough  human 
faces,  to  find  consolation  in  his  dumb  parishioners;  he 
is  conscious  to  pain  of  that  "  voisinage  et  cousinage  entre 
I'homme  et  les  autres  animaux  "  of  which  Charron,  the 
friend  of  Montaigne,  speaks.  So  he  extends  a  fatherly, 
clerical  protection  over  the  flocks  and  herds  of  Cabre- 
rolles,  and  he  revives  a  quaint  and  obsolescent  custom 


1 68  French  Profiles 

by  which,  on  Christmas  night,  the  Cevenol  cattle  are 
brought  to  the  door  of  their  parish  church  to  hsten  to 
the  service,  and  afterwards  are  blessed  by  the  priest. 
The  book  ends  with  a  sort  of  canticle  of  yule-tide,  in 
which  the  patient  kine,  with  faint  tramplings  and 
lowings,  take  modestly  tlieir  appointed  part ;  and  these 
rites  at  the  midnight  mass  are  described  as  Mr.  Thomas 
Hardy  might  have  described  them  if  Dorchester  had 
been  Bedarieux.  In  the  whole  of  this  beautiful  little 
novel  Ferdinand  Fabre  is  combating  what  he  paints  as 
a  besetting  sin  of  his  beloved  Cevenols — their  indifference 
and  even  cruelty  to  animals  and  birds,  from  which  the 
very  clergy  seem  to  be  not  always  exempt. 

To  yet  another  of  his  exclusively  clerical  novels  but 
brief  reference  must  here  be  made,  although  it  has  been 
a  general  favourite.  In  Mon  Oncle  Celestin  (1881)  we 
have  a  study  of  the  entirely  single  and  tender-hearted 
country  priest — a  Tertullian  in  the  pulpit,  an  infant  out 
of  it,  a  creature  all  compact  of  spiritual  and  puerile 
qualities.  His  innocent  benevolence  leads  him  bhnd- 
fold  to  a  deplorable  scandal,  his  inexperience  to  a  terrible 
quarrel  with  a  rival  archaeologist,  who  drives  C61estin 
almost  to  desperation.  His  enemies  at  length  push  him 
so  far  that  they  determine  the  bishop  to  suspend  him 
so  that  he  becomes  revoque  ;  but  his  health  had  long 
been  undermined,  and  he  is  fortunate  in  dying  just 
before  this  terrible  news  can  be  broken  to  him.  This 
tragic  story  is  laid  in  scenes  of  extraordinary  physical 
beauty ;  in  no  book  of  his  has  Fabre  contrived  to  paint 
the  subhme  and  varied  landscape  of  the  Cevennes  in 
more  delicious  colours.  In  Celestin,  who  has  the 
charge  of  a  youthful  and  enthusiastically  devoted 
nephew,  Fabre  has  unquestionably  had  recourse  to  his 
recollections  of  the  life  at  Camplong  when  he  was  a 


Ferdinand  Fabre  169 

child,  in  the  company  of  his  sainted  uncle,  the  Abbe 
Fulcran. 

In  the  whole  company  of  Ferdinand  Fabre's  priests 
the  reader  will  not  find  the  type  which  he  will  perhaps 
most  confidently  await — that,  namely,  of  the  cleric  who 
is  untrue  to  his  vows  of  chastity.  There  is  here  no 
Abbe  Mouret  caught  in  the  mesh  of  physical  pleasures, 
and  atoning  for  his  faute  in  a  pinchbeck  Garden  of 
Eden.  The  impure  priest,  according  to  Fabre,  is  a 
dream  of  the  Voltairean  imagination.  His  churchmen 
are  sternly  celibate;  their  first  and  most  inevitable 
duty  has  been  to  conquer  the  flesh  at  the  price  of  their 
blood ;  as  he  conceives  them,  there  is  no  place  in  their 
thoughts  at  all  for  the  movements  of  a  vain  concupi- 
scence. The  solitary  shadow  of  the  Abbe  Vignerte,  sus- 
pended for  sins  of  this  class,  does  indeed  flit  across  the 
background  of  Lucifer,  but  only  as  a  horror  and  a 
portent.  In  some  of  these  priests,  as  they  grow  middle- 
aged,  there  comes  that  terror  of  women  which  M.  Anatole 
France  notes  so  amusingly  in  Le  Mannequin  d'Osier. 
The  austre  Abbe  Jourfier  trembles  in  all  his  limbs  when 
a  woman,  even  an  old  peasant- wife,  calls  him  to  the 
confessional.  He  obeys  the  call,  but  he  would  rather 
be  told  to  chmb  the  snowy  peak  of  the  highest  Cevennes 
and  stay  there. 

To  make  such  characters  attractive  and  entertaining 
is,  manifestly,  extremely  difficult.  Fabre  succeeds  in 
doing  it  by  means  of  his  tact,  his  exhaustive  knowledge 
of  varieties  of  the  clerical  species,  and,  most  of  all  per- 
haps, by  the  intensity  of  his  own  curiosity  and  interest. 
His  attitude  towards  his  creations  becomes,  at  critical 
moments,  very  amusing.  "  The  reader  will  hardly 
credit  what  was  his  horrible  reply,"  Fabre  will  say,  or 
"  How  can  we  explain  such  an  extreme  violence  in  our 


170  French  Profiles 

principal  personage  ?  "  He  forgets  that  these  people 
are  imaginary,  and  he  calls  upon  us,  with  eager  com- 
placency, to  observe  what  strange  things  they  are  saying 
and  doing.  His  vivacious  sincerity  permits  him  to  put 
forth  with  success  novel  after  novel,  from  which  the 
female  element  is  entirely  excluded.  In  his  principal 
books  love  is  not  mentioned,  and  women  take  no  part 
at  all.  Mon  Oncle  Celestin  is  hardly  an  exception,  be- 
cause the  female  figures  introduced  are  those  of  a  spiteful 
virago  and  a  girl  of  clouded  intelhgence,  who  are  merely 
machines  to  lift  into  higher  prominence  the  sufferings 
and  the  lustrous  virtues  of  the  Abbe  Celestin.  Through 
the  dramatic  excitement,  the  nerve-storm,  of  L'Abbd 
Tigrane  there  never  is  visible  so  much  as  the  flutter  of 
a  petticoat;  in  Lucifer,  the  interesting  and  pathetic 
chapter  on  the  text  Domine,  ad  adjuvandum  me  festina 
dismisses  the  subject  in  a  manner  which  gives  no  en- 
couragement to  levity.  Those  who  wish  to  laugh  with 
Ariosto  or  to  snigger  with  Aretine  must  not  come  to 
Ferdinand  Fabre.  He  has  not  faith,  he  pretends  to  no 
vocation ;  but  that  religious  life  upon  which  he  looks 
back  in  a  sort  of  ceaseless  nostalgia  confronts  him  in  its 
purest  and  most  loyal  aspect. 


IV 

The  priest  is  not  absolutely  the  only  subject  which 
preoccupies  Ferdinand  Fabre;  he  is  interested  in  the 
truant  also.  Wild  nature  is,  in  his  eyes,  the  great  and 
most  dangerous  rival  of  the  Seminary,  and  has  its  notable 
victories.  One  of  the  prettiest  books  of  his  later  years, 
Monsieur  Jean  (1886),  tells  how  a  precocious  boy, 
brought  up  in  the  manse  of  Camplong — at  last  Fabre 
inextricably  confounded  autobiography  with  fiction — 


Ferdinand  Fabre  171 

is  tempted  to  go  off  on  an  innocent  excursion  with  a 
fiery-blooded  gipsy  girl  called  Mariette.  The  whole 
novel  is  occupied  by  a  recital  of  what  they  saw  and  what 
they  did  during  their  two  days'  escapade,  and  offers  the 
author  one  of  those  opportunities  which  he  loves  for 
dealing  almost  in  an  excess  of  naivete  with  the  incidents 
of  a  pastoral  life.  Less  pretty,  and  less  complete,  but 
treated  with  greater  force  and  conviction,  is  the  tale  of 
Toussaint  Galahru  (1887),  which  tells  how  a  good  little 
boy  of  twelve  years  old  fell  into  the  grievous  sin  of  going 
a-poaching  on  Sunday  morning  with  two  desperate 
characters  who  were  more  than  old  enough  to  know 
better.  The  story  itself  is  nothing.  What  is  delicious 
is  the  reflection  of  the  boy's  candid  and  timid  but  ad- 
venturous soul,  and  the  passage  before  his  eyes  of  the 
innumerable  creatures  of  the  woodland.  At  every  step 
there  is  a  stir  in  the  oleanders  or  a  flutter  among  the 
chestnut-leaves,  and  ever  and  anon,  through  a  break 
in  the  copses,  there  peep  forth  against  the  rich  blue 
sky  the  white  peaks  of  the  mountains.  Toussaint 
Galahru  is  the  only  book  known  to  me  in  the  French 
language  which  might  really  have  been  written  by 
Richard  Jefferies,  with  some  revision,  perhaps,  by  Mr. 
Thomas  Hardy. 

One  curious  book  by  Ferdinand  Fabre  demands 
mention  in  a  general  survey  of  his  work.  It  stands 
quite  apart,  in  one  sense,  from  his  customary  labours; 
in  another  sense  it  offers  the  quintessence  of  them. 
The  only  story  which  he  has  pubhshed  in  which  every- 
thing is  sacrificed  to  beauty  of  form  is  Le  Chevrier  (1867), 
which  deserves  a  term  commonly  misused,  and  always 
dubious;  it  may  be  called  a  "prose-poem."  In  his 
other  books  the  style  is  sturdy,  rustic  and  plain,  with 
frequent  use  of  patois  and  a  certain  thickness  or  heaviness 


172  French   Profiles 

of  expression.  His  phrases  are  abrupt,  not  always  quite 
lucid;  there  can  be  no  question,  although  he  protested 
violently  against  the  attribution,  that  Fabre  studied  the 
manner  of  Balzac,  not  always  to  his  advantage.  But  in 
Le  Chevricr — which  is  a  sort  of  discouraged  Daphnis  and 
Chloe  of  the  C^vennes — he  deliberately  composed  a 
work  in  modulated  and  elaborate  numbers.  It  might 
be  the  translation  of  a  poem  in  Provencal  or  Spanish; 
we  seem  in  reading  it  to  divine  the  vanished  form  of 
verse. 

It  is,  moreover,  written  in  a  highly  artificial  language, 
partly  in  Cevenol  patois,  partly  in  French  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  imitated,  it  is  evident,  from  the  style  of  Amyot 
and  Montaigne.  Le  Chevrier  begins,  in  ordinary  French, 
by  describing  how  the  author  goes  up  into  the  Larzac, 
a  bleak  little  plateau  that  smells  of  rosemary  and  wild 
thyme  in  the  gorges  of  the  High  Cevennes,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  shooting  hares,  and  how  he  takes  with  him  an 
elderly  goatherd,  Eran  Erembert,  famous  for  his  skill 
in  sport.  But  one  day  the  snow  shuts  them  up  in  the 
farmhouse,  and  Eran  is  cajoled  into  telling  his  life's 
history.  This  he  does  in  the  aforesaid  mixture  of  patois 
and  Renaissance  French,  fairly  but  not  invariably  sus- 
tained. It  is  a  story  of  passionate  love,  ill  requited. 
Eran  has  loved  a  pretty  foundling,  called  Felice,  but  she 
prefers  his  master's  son,  a  handsome  ne'er-do-weel, 
called  Fredery,  whom  she  marries.  Eran  turns  from  her 
to  Fran9on,  a  still  more  beautiful  but  worthless  girl,  and 
wastes  his  life  with  her.  Fredery  dies  at  last,  and  Eran 
constrains  Felice  to  marry  him;  but  her  heart  is  else- 
where, and  she  drowns  herself.  It  is  a  sad,  impassioned 
tale,  embroidered  on  every  page  with  love  of  the  High 
C6venol  country  and  knowledge  of  its  pastoral  rites  and 
customs. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  173 

The  scene  is  curious,  because  of  its  various  elements. 
The  snow,  congealing  around  a  neighbouring  peak  in 
the  Larzac,  falls  upon  the  branches  of  a  date-palm  in 
the  courtyard  of  the  farmhouse  at  Mirande,  and  on  the 
peacocks,  humped  up  and  ruffled  in  its  branches.  But 
through  all  the  picture,  with  its  incongruities  of  a  southern 
mountain  country,  moves  the  cabrade,  the  docile  flock 
of  goats,  with  Sacripant,  a  noble  pedigree  billy,  at  their 
head,  and  these  animals,  closely  attending  upon  Eran 
their  herd,  seem  to  form  a  chorus  in  the  classico-rustic 
tragedy.  And  all  the  country,  bare  as  it  is,  is  eminently 
giboyeux  ;  it  stirs  and  rustles  with  the  incessant  move- 
ment of  those  living  creatures  which  Ferdinand  Fabre 
loves  to  describe.  And  here,  for  once,  he  gives  himself 
up  to  the  primitive  powers  of  love;  the  priest  is  kept 
out  of  sight,  or  scarcely  mars  the  rich  fermentation  of 
life  with  glimpses  of  his  soutane  and  his  crucifix. 

Le  Chevrier  has  never  enjoyed  any  success  in  France, 
where  its  archaic  pastoralism  was  misapprehended  from 
the  first.  But  it  was  much  admired  by  Walter  Pater, 
who  once  went  so  far  as  to  talk  about  translating  it. 
The  novelist  of  the  Cevennes  had  an  early  and  an  ardent 
reader  in  Pater,  to  whom  I  owe  my  own  introduction  to 
Ferdinand  Fabre.  Unfortunately,  the  only  indication 
of  this  interest  which  survives,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  an 
article  in  the  privately  printed  Essays  from  the  Guardian, 
where  Pater  reviews  one  of  Fabre's  weakest  works,  the 
novel  called  Norine  (1889).  He  says  some  delicate 
things  about  this  idyllic  tale,  which  he  ingeniously  call 
"  a  symphony  in  cherries  and  goldfinches."  But  what 
one  would  have  welcomed  would  have  been  a  serious 
examination  of  one  of  the  great  cehbate  novels,  L'Abbe 
Tigrane  or  Lucifer.  The  former  of  these,  I  know, 
attracted  Pater  almost  more   than   any  other  recent 


174  French  Profiles 

French  work  in  fiction.  He  found,  as  Taine  did,  a  solid 
psychological  value  in  these  studies  of  the  strictly 
ecclesiastical  passions — the  jealousies,  the  ambitions, 
the  violent  and  masterful  movements  of  types  that 
were  exclusively  clerical.  And  the  struggle  which  is  the 
incident  of  life  really  important  to  Fabre,  the  tension 
caused  by  the  divine  "  vocation  "  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  cry  of  physical  nature  on  the  other,  this  was  of  the 
highest  interest  to  Pater  also.  He  was  delighted,  more- 
over, with  the  upland  freshness,  the  shrewd  and  cleanly 
brightness  of  Fabre's  country  stories,  so  infinitely  re- 
moved from  what  we  indolently  conceive  that  we  shall 
find  in  "  a  French  novel." 

An  English  writer,  of  higher  rank  than  Fabre,  was 
revealing  the  Cevennes  to  English  readers  just  when  the 
Frenchman  was  publishing  his  mountain  stories.  If 
we  have  been  reading  Le  Chevrier,  it  will  be  found  amus- 
ing to  take  up  again  the  Through  the  Cevennes  with  a 
Donkey  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  The  route  which 
the  Scotchman  took  was  from  Le  Monastier  to  Alais, 
across  the  north-eastern  portion  of  the  mountain-range, 
while  Fabre  almost  exclusively  haunts  the  south-western 
slopes  in  the  Herault.  Stevenson  brings  before  us  a 
bleak  and  stubborn  landscape,  far  less  genial  than  the 
wooded  uplands  of  Bedarieux.  But  in  both  pictures 
much  is  ahke.  The  bare  moors  on  the  tops  of  the 
Cevennes  are  the  same  in  each  case,  and  when  we  read 
Stevenson's  rhapsody  on  the  view  from  the  high  ridge 
of  the  Mimerte,  it  might  well  be  a  page  translated  from 
one  of  the  novels  of  Ferdinand  Fabre.  But  the  closest 
parallel  with  the  Frenchman  is  always  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy, 
whom  in  his  rustic  chapters  he  closely  resembles  even  in 
style.  Yet  here  again  we  have  the  national  advantage, 
since  Fabre  has  no  humour,  or  exceedingly  httle. 


Ferdinand  Fabre  175 

Fabre  is  a  solitary,  stationary  figure  in  the  current 
history  of  French  hterature.  He  is  the  gauche  and 
somewhat  suspicious  country  bumpkin  in  the  urban 
congregation  of  the  wits.  He  has  not  a  word  to  say 
about  "  schools  "  and  "  tendencies  "  ;  he  is  not  an  adept 
in  nevrosite  d' artiste.  It  is  odd  to  think  of  this  rugged 
Cevenol  as  a  contemporary  of  Daudet  and  Goncourt, 
Sardou  and  Bourget ;  he  has  nothing  whatever  in  com- 
mon with  them.  You  must  be  interested  in  his  affairs, 
for  he  pretends  to  no  interest  in  yours.  Like  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling's  "  Native-Born,"  Ferdinand  Fabre 
seems  to  say,  "  Let  a  fellow  sing  of  the  little  things  he 
cares  about  "  ;  and  what  these  are  we  have  seen.  They 
are  found  among  the  winding  paths  that  lead  up  through 
the  oleander-marshes,  through  the  vineyards,  through 
the  chestnuts,  to  the  moorlands  and  the  windy  peaks; 
they  are  walking  beside  the  patient  flocks  of  goats,  when 
Sacripant  is  marching  at  their  head;  they  are  the 
poachers  and  the  reapers,  the  begging  friars  and  the 
sportsmen,  all  the  quiet,  rude  population  of  those 
shrouded  hamlets  of  the  Herault.  Most  of  all  they  are 
those  abbes  and  canons,  those  humble,  tremulous  parish 
priests  and  benevolently  arrogant  prelates,  whom  he 
understands  more  intimately  than  any  other  author  has 
done  who  has  ever  written.  Persuade  him  to  speak  to 
you  of  these,  and  you  will  be  enchanted ;  yet  never 
forget  that  his  themes  are  limited  and  his  mode  of 
dehvery  monotonous. 


A  FIRST  SIGHT  OF  VERLAINE 


A  FIRST  SIGHT  OF  VERLAINE 

In  1893  the  thoughts  of  a  certain  pilgrim  were  a  good 
deal  occupied  by  the  theories  and  experiments  which  a 
section  of  the  younger  French  poets  were  engaged  upon. 
In  this  country,  the  Symbolists  and  Decadents  of  Paris 
had  been  laughed  at  and  parodied,  but,  with  the  exception 
of  Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  no  English  critic  had  given 
their  tentatives  any  serious  attention.  I  became  much 
interested — not  wholly  converted,  certainly,  but  con- 
siderably impressed — as  I  studied,  not  what  was  said 
about  them  by  their  enemies,  but  what  they  wrote  them- 
selves. Among  them  all,  there  was  but  one,  Mallarme, 
whom  I  knew  personally;  him  I  had  met,  more  than 
twenty  years  before,  carrying  the  vast  folio  of  his 
Manet-Poe  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  London, 
disappointed  but  not  discouraged.  I  learned  that  there 
were  certain  haunts  where  these  later  Decadents  might 
be  observed  in  large  numbers,  drawn  together  by  the 
gregarious  attraction  of  verse.  I  determined  to  haunt 
that  neighbourhood  with  a  butterfly-net,  and  see  what 
delicate  creatures  with  powdery  wings  I  could  catch. 
And,  above  all,  was  it  not  understood  that  that 
vaster  lepidopter,  that  giant  hawk-moth,  Paul  Verlaine, 
uncoiled  his  proboscis  in  the  same  absinthe-corollas  ? 

Timidity,  doubtless,  would  have  brought  the  scheme 
to  nought,  if,  unfolding  it  to  Henry  Harland,  who 
knows  his  Paris  like  the  palm  of  his  hand,  he  had 
not,  with  enthusiastic  kindness,  offered  to  become  my 

179 


i8o  French   Profiles 

cicerone.  He  was  far  from  sharing  my  interest  in  the 
Symbolo-decadent  movement,  and  the  ideas  of  the 
"  poetes  abscons  comme  la  lune  "  left  him  a  little  cold 
yet  he  entered  at  once  into  the  sport  of  the  idea.  To 
race  up  and  down  the  Boulevard  St.  Michel,  catching 
live  poets  in  shoals,  what  a  charming  game  !  So,  with 
a  beating  heart  and  under  this  gallant  guidance,  I 
started  on  a  beautiful  April  morning  to  try  my  luck  as 
an  entomologist.  This  is  not  the  occasion  to  speak  of 
the  butterflies  which  we  successfully  captured  during 
this  and  the  following  days  and  nights;  the  expedition 
was  a  great  success.  But,  all  the  time,  the  hope  of 
capturing  that  really  substantial  moth,  Verlaine,  was 
uppermost,  and  this  is  how  it  was  realised. 

As  every  one  knows,  the  broad  Boulevard  St.  Michel 
runs  almost  due  south  from  the  Palais  de  Justice  to  the 
Gardens  of  the  Luxembourg.  Through  the  greater 
part  of  its  course,  it  is  principally  (so  it  strikes  one) 
composed  of  restaurants  and  brasseries,  rather  dull  in 
the  daytime,  excessively  blazing  and  gay  at  night.  To 
the  critical  entomologist  the  eastern  side  of  this  street 
is  known  as  the  chief,  indeed  almost  the  only  habitat 
of  'poeta  symbolans,  which,  however,  occurs  here  in  vast 
numbers.  Each  of  the  leaders  of  a  school  has  his 
particular  caf 6,  where  he  is  to  be  found  at  an  hour  and  in  a 
chair  known  to  the  habitues  of  the  place.  So  Dryden  sat 
at  Will's  and  Addison  at  Button's,  when  chocolate  and 
ratafia,  I  suppose,  took  the  place  of  absinthe.  M.  Jean 
Moreas  sits  in  great  circumstance  at  the  Restaurant 
d'Harcourt — or  he  did  three  years  ago — and  there  I 
enjoyed  much  surprising  and  stimulating  conversation. 
But  Verlaine — where  was  he  ?  At  his  cafe,  the  Fran- 
9ois-Premier,  we  were  told  that  he  had  not  been  seen  for 
four  days.     "  There  is  a  letter  for  him — he  must  be  ill," 


A  First  Sight  of  Verlaine  i8i 

said  Madame ;  and  we  felt  what  the  tiger-hunter  feels 
when  the  tiger  has  gone  to  visit  a  friend  in  another 
valley.    But  to  persist  is  to  succeed. 

The  last  of  three  days  devoted  to  this  fascinating 
sport  had  arrived.  I  had  seen  Symbolists  and  Deca- 
dents to  my  heart's  content.  I  had  learned  that  Victor 
Hugo  was  not  a  poet  at  all,  and  that  M.  Gustave  Kahn 
was  a  splendid  bard;  I  had  heard  that  neither  Victor 
Hugo  nor  M.  Gustave  Kahn  had  a  spark  of  talent,  but  that 
M.  Charles  Morice  was  the  real  Simon  Pure.  I  had  heard 
a  great  many  conflicting  opinions  stated  without  hesita- 
tion and  with  a  delightful  violence ;  I  had  heard  a  great 
many  verses  recited  which  I  did  not  understand  because 
I  was  a  foreigner,  and  could  not  have  understood  if  I 
had  been  a  Frenchman.  I  had  quaffed  a  number  of 
highly  indigestible  drinks,  and  had  enjoyed  myself  very 
much.  But  I  had  not  seen  Verlaine,  and  poor  Henry 
Harland  was  in  despair.  We  invited  some  of  the  poets 
to  dine  with  us  that  night  (this  is  the  etiquette  of  the 
"  Bou'  Mich'  ")  at  the  Restaurant  d'Harcourt,  and  a 
very  entertaining  meal  we  had.  M.  Moreas  was  in  the 
chair,  and  a  poetess  with  a  charming  name  decorated 
us  all  with  sprays  of  the  narcissus  foeticus.  I  suppose 
that  the  company  was  what  is  called  "  a  little  mixed," 
but  I  am  sure  it  was  very  lyrical.  I  had  the  honour 
of  giving  my  arm  to  a  most  amiable  lady,  the  Queen 
of  Golconda,  whose  precise  rank  among  the  crowned 
heads  of  Europe  is,  I  am  afraid,  but  vaguely  deter- 
mined. The  dinner  was  simple,  but  distinctly  good; 
the  chairman  was  in  magnificent  form,  un  vrai  chef 
d'ecole,  and  between  each  of  the  courses  somebody 
intoned  his  own  verses  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  The 
windows  were  wide  open  on  to  the  Boulevard,  but  there 
was  no  public  expression  of  surprise. 


1 82  French   Profiles 

It  was  all  excessively  amusing,  but  deep  down  in  my 
consciousness,  tolling  like  a  little  bell,  there  continued 
to  sound  the  words,  "  We  haven't  seen  Verlaine."  I 
confessed  as  much  at  last  to  the  sovereign  of  Golconda, 
and  she  was  graciously  pleased  to  say  that  she  would 
make  a  great  effort.  She  was  kind  enough,  I  believe, 
to  send  out  a  sort  of  search-party.  Meanwhile,  we 
adjourned  to  another  cafe,  to  drink  other  things,  and  our 
company  grew  like  a  rolling  snowball.  I  was  losing  all 
hope,  and  we  were  descending  the  Boulevard,  our  faces 
set  for  home ;  the  Queen  of  Golconda  was  hanging  heavily 
on  my  arm,  and  having  formed  a  flattering  miscon- 
ception as  to  my  age,  was  warning  me  against  the 
temptations  of  Paris,  when  two  more  poets,  a  male 
and  a  female,  most  amiably  hurried  to  meet  us  with  the 
intoxicating  news  that  Verlaine  had  been  seen  to  dart 
into  a  little  place  called  the  Cafe  Soleil  d'Or.  Thither 
we  accordingly  hied,  buoyed  up  by  hope,  and  our  party, 
now  comprising  a  dozen  persons  (all  poets),  rushed  into 
an  almost  empty  drinking-shop.  But  no  Verlaine  was 
to  be  seen.  Moreas  then  collected  us  round  a  table, 
and  fresh  grenadines  were  ordered. 

Where  I  sat,  by  the  elbow  of  Moreas,  I  was  opposite 
an  open  door,  absolutely  dark,  leading  down,  by  obhque 
stairs,  to  a  cellar.  As  I  idly  watched  this  square  of  black- 
ness I  suddenly  saw  some  ghostly  shape  fluttering  at  the 
bottom  of  it.  It  took  the  form  of  a  strange  bald  head, 
bobbing  close  to  the  ground.  Although  it  was  so  dim 
and  vague,  an  idea  crossed  my  mind.  Not  daring  to 
speak,  I  touched  Moreas,  and  so  drew  his  attention 
to  it.  "  Pas  un  mot,  pas  un  geste.  Monsieur  I  "  he 
whispered,  and  then,  instructed  in  the  guile  of  his  race, 
insidias  Danaum,  the  eminent  author  of  Les  CantiUnes 
rose,  making  a  vague  detour  towards  the  street,  and  then 


A  First  Sight  of  Verlaine  183 

plunged  at  the  cellar  door.  There  was  a  prolonged  scuffle 
and  a  rolling  downstairs;  then  Moreas  reappeared 
triumphant;  behind  him  something  flopped  up  out  of 
the  darkness  hke  an  owl, — a  timid  shambling  figure  in 
a  soft  black  hat,  with  jerking  hands,  and  it  peeped  with 
intention  to  disappear  again.  But  there  were  cries  of 
"  Venez  done,  Maitre,"  and  by-and-by  Verlaine  was 
persuaded  to  emerge  definitely  and  to  sit  by  me. 

I  had  been  prepared  for  strange  eccentricities  of  garb, 
but  he  was  very  decently  dressed ;  he  referred  at  once  to 
the  fact,  and  explained  that  this  was  the  suit  which  had 
been  bought  for  him  to  lecture  in,  in  Belgium.  He  was 
particularly  proud  of  a  real  white  shirt ;  "  C'est  ma 
chemise  de  conference,"  he  said,  and  shot  out  the  cuffs 
of  it  with  pardonable  pride.  He  was  full  of  his  experi- 
ences of  Belgium,  and  in  particular  he  said  some  very 
pretty  things  about  Bruges  and  its  hdguinages,  and  how 
much  he  should  hke  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  there. 
Yet  it  seemed  less  the  mediaeval  buildings  which  had 
attracted  him  than  a  museum  of  old  lace.  He  spoke 
with  a  veiled  utterance,  difficult  for  me  to  follow.  Not 
for  an  instant  would  he  take  off  his  hat,  so  that  I  could 
not  see  the  Socratic  dome  of  forehead  which  figures  in  all 
the  caricatures.  I  thought  his  countenance  very  Chinese, 
and  I  may  perhaps  say  here  that  when  he  was  in  London 
in  1894  I  called  him  a  Chinese  philosopher.  He  rephed  : 
"  Chinois — comme  vous  voulez,  mais  philosophe — non 
pas  !  " 

On  this  first  occasion  (April  2,  1893),  recitations  were 
called  for,  and  Verlaine  repeated  his  Clair  de  Lune : — 

"  Votre  fime  est  un  paysage  choisi 

Que  vont  charmant  masques  et  bergamasques 
Jouant  du  luth  et  dansant  et  quasi 

Tristes  sous  leurs  deguisements  fantasques." 


184  French  Profiles 

and  presently,  with  a  strange  indifference  to  all  incon- 
gruities of  scene  and  company,  part  of  his  wonderful 
Mon  Dieu  m'a  dit : — 

"  J'ai  repondu  :  '  Seigneur,  vous  avez  dit  mon  ame. 
C'est  vrai  que  je  vous  cherche  et  ne  vous  trouve  pas. 
Mais  vous  aimer  !     Voyez  comme  je  suis  en  bas, 
Vous  dont  I'amour  toujours  monte  comme  la  flamme; 

'  Vous,  la  source  de  paix  que  toute  soif  reclame, 
Helas  !     Voyez  un  peu  tous  mes  tristes  combats  ! 
Oserai-je  adorer  la  trace  de  vos  pas, 
Sur  ces  genoux  saignants  d'un  rampement  inf&me  ?  '  " 

He  recited  in  a  low  voice,  without  gesticulation,  very 
delicately.  Then  Moreas,  in  exactly  the  opposite  manner, 
with  roarings  of  a  bull  and  with  modulated  sawings 
of  the  air  with  his  hand,  intoned  an  eclogue  addressed 
by  himself  to  Verlaine  as  "  Tityre."  And  so  the  exciting 
evening  closed,  the  passionate  shepherd  in  question 
presently  disappearing  again  down  those  mysterious 
stairs.  And  we,  out  into  the  soft  April  night  and  the 
budding  smell  of  the  trees. 

J  896. 


THE  IRONY  OF  M.  ANATOLE 
FRANCE 


THE   IRONY  OF  M.  ANATOLE 
FRANCE 

If  we  are  asked,  What  is  the  most  entertaining  intelli- 
gence at  this  moment  working  in  the  world  of  letters  ? 
I  do  not  see  that  we  can  escape  from  replying.  That  of 
M.  Anatole  France.  Nor  is  it  merely  that  he  is  sprightly 
and  amusing  in  himself;  he  is  much  more  than  that. 
He  indicates  a  direction  of  European  feeUng;  he  ex- 
presses a  mood  of  European  thought.  Excessively  weary 
of  all  the  moral  effort  that  was  applied  to  literature  in 
the  eighties,  all  the  searchings  into  theories  and  pro- 
claimings of  gospels,  all  the  fuss  and  strain  of  Ibsen  and 
Tolstoi  and  Zola,  that  the  better  kind  of  reader  should 
make  a  volte-face  was  inevitable.  This  general  conse- 
quence might  have  been  foreseen,  but  hardly  that 
M.  Anatole  France,  in  his  quiet  beginnings,  was  preparing 
to  take  the  position  of  a  leader  in  letters.  He,  obviously, 
has  dreamed  of  no  such  thing;  he  has  merely  gone  on 
developing  and  emancipating  his  individuality.  He  has 
taken  advantage  of  his  growing  popularity  to  be  more 
and  more  courageously  himself;  and  doubtless  he  is 
surprised,  as  we  are,  to  find  that  he  has  noiselessly 
expanded  into  one  of  the  leading  intellectual  forces  of 
our  day. 

After  a  period  of  enthusiasm,  we  expect  a  great  sus- 
picion of  enthusiasts  to  set  in.  M.  Anatole  France  is 
what  they  used  to  call  a  Pyrrhonist  in  the  seventeenth 
century — a  sceptic,  one  who  doubts  whether  it  is  worth 

187 


1 88  French  Profiles 

while  to  struggle  insanely  against  the  trend  of  things. 
The  man  who  continues  to  cross  the  road  leisurely, 
although  the  cycHsts'  bells  are  ringing,  is  a  Pjorhonist 
— and  in  a  very  special  sense,  for  the  ancient  philosopher 
who  gives  his  name  to  the  class  made  himself  conspic- 
uous by  refusing  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  careering 
chariots.  After  a  burst  of  moral  excitement,  a  storm 
of  fads  and  fanaticism,  there  is  bound  to  set  in  calm 
weather  and  the  reign  of  indifferentism.  The  ever- 
subtle  Pascal  noticed  this,  and  remarked  on  the  impor- 
tance to  scepticism  of  working  on  a  basis  of  ethical 
sensitiveness.  "  Rien  fortifie  plus  le  pyrrhonisme,"  he 
says,  "  que  ce  qu'il  y  en  a  qui  ne  sont  pas  pyrrhoniens." 
The  talent  of  M,  Anatole  France  is  like  a  beautiful  pallid 
flower  that  has  grown  out  of  a  root  fed  on  rich  juices  of 
moral  strenuousness.  He  would  not  be  so  dehcately 
balanced,  so  sportive,  so  elegantly  and  wilfully  unattached 
to  any  moral  system,  if  he  had  not  been  preceded  by 
masters  of  such  a  gloomy  earnestness. 

Le  Mannequin  D'Osier 

After  many  efforts,  more  or  less  imperfectly  successful, 
M.  France  seems  at  last  to  have  discovered  a  medium 
absolutely  favourable  to  his  genius.  He  has  pursued 
his  ideal  of  graceful  scepticism  from  period  to  period. 
He  has  sought  to  discover  it  in  the  life  of  late  antiquity 
(Thais),  in  the  ironic  naivete  oi  the  Middle  Ages  {Balthasar 
and  Le  Putts  de  Sainte  Claire),  in  the  humours  of  eigh- 
teenth-century deism  {La  Rdtisserie  de  la  Reine  Pedauque 
and  M.  Jerome  Coignard),  in  the  criticism  of  contem- 
porary books  {La  Vie  Litteraire),  in  pure  philosophical 
paradox  {Le  Jar  din  d' Epicure).  Only  once,  in  my 
opinion,  has  he  ceased  to  be  loyal  to  that  sagesse  et  elegance 
which  are  his  instinctive  aim ;  only  once — in  that  crude 


M.  Anltole  France  189 

Le  Lys  Rouge,  which  is  so  unworthy  of  his  genius  in 
everything  but  style.  With  this  exception,  through 
fifteen  dehghtful  volumes  he  has  been  conscientiously 
searching  for  his  appropriate  medium,  and,  surely,  he 
has  found  it  at  last.  He  has  found  it  in  that  unnamed 
town  of  the  north  of  France,  where  he  listens  to  the 
echoes  and  reverberations  of  the  life  of  to-day,  and 
repeats  them  naively  and  maliciously  to  us  out  of  his 
mocking,  resonant  lips. 

The  two  books  which  M.  Anatole  France  published 
in  1897  belong  to  the  new  category.  Perhaps  it  was 
not  every  reader  of  L'Orme  du  Mail  who  noticed  the 
words  "  Hisioire  Contemporaine "  at  the  top  of  the 
title-page.  But  they  are  repeated  on  that  of  Le  Manne- 
quin d'Osier,  and  they  evidently  have  a  significance. 
Is  this  M.  Anatole  France's  mode  of  indicating  to  us 
that  he  is  starting  on  some  such  colossal  enterprise  as  a 
Comedie  Huvtaine,  or  a  series  like  Les  Rougon  Macquart  ? 
Nothing  quite  so  alarming  as  this,  probably,  but  doubt- 
less a  series  of  some  sort  is  intended ;  and,  already,  it  is 
well  to  warn  the  impetuous  reader  not  to  open  Le 
Mannequin  d'Osier  till  he  has  mastered  L'Orme  du  Mail, 
at  the  risk  of  failing  to  comprehend  the  situation.  The 
one  of  these  books  is  a  direct  continuation  of  the  other. 

There  was  no  plot  in  L'Orme  du  Mail.  We  were 
introduced,  or  rather  invisibly  suspended  within,  a 
provincial  city  of  France  of  to-day,  where,  under  all 
species  of  decorous  exteriors,  intrigues  were  being 
pushed  forward,  domestic  dramas  conducted,  the 
hollowness  of  intellectual  pretensions  concealed  and 
even — for  M.  Anatole  France  knows  the  value  of  the 
savage  note  in  his  exquisite  concert — brutal  crimes 
committed.  With  a  skill  all  his  own,  he  interested  us 
in  the  typical  individualities  in  this  anthill  of  a  town, 


190  French   Profiles 

and  he  knows  how  to  produce  his  effects  with  so  hght 
and  yet  so  firm  a  hand,  that  he  never  for  a  moment 
wearied  us,  or  allowed  us  to  forget  his  purpose.  He  has 
become  no  less  persuaded  than  was  Montaigne  himself 
of  the  fact  that  man  is  in  his  essence  "  ondoyant  et 
divers,"  and  he  will  teach  us  to  see  these  incongruities, 
no  longer  in  some  fabulous  Jerome  Coignard,  but  in 
the  very  forms  of  humanity  which  elbow  us  daily  in 
the  street.  He  will  do  this  with  the  expenditure  of  that 
humour  which  alone  makes  the  Pyrrhonist  attitude 
tolerable,  and  he  will  scatter  the  perfume  of  his  gaiety 
in  gusts  so  delicate  and  pure  that  it  shall  pervade  his 
books  from  end  to  end,  yet  never  for  a  moment  betrays 
the  author  into  farce  or  caricature.  He  will,  moreover, 
lift  his  dialogue  on  to  a  plane  of  culture  much  higher 
than  is  customary  even  in  French  novels,  where  the 
standard  of  allusion  and  topic  in  conversation  has 
always  been  more  instructed  than  in  English  stories  of  a 
similar  class.  He  will  examine,  with  all  his  array  of  wit 
and  tolerance  and  paradoxical  scepticism,  how  the  minds 
of  average  men  and  women  are  affected  by  the  current 
questions  of  the  hour. 

Readers  of  L'Orme  du  Mail  were  prepared  for  the 
entertainment  which  was  bound  to  follow.  They  were 
familiar  with  the  battle  royal  for  the  vacant  mitre  which 
was  silently  raging  between  M.  1' Abbe  Lantaigne  and  M. 
I'Abbe  Guitrel ;  they  sympathised  with  the  difficulties  of 
the  prefet,  M.  Worms-Clavelin,  so  little  anxious  to  make 
himself  disagreeable,  and  so  good-natured  and  clever 
underneath  his  irradicable  vulgarity ;  they  had  listened 
with  eagerness  to  the  afternoon  conversations  in  the 
bookshop  of  M.  Paillot;  they  had  hung  over  the  back 
of  the  seat  in  the  shadow  of  the  great  elm-tree  on  the 
Mall,   to  overhear  the  endless  amiable  wranghngs  of 


M.  Anatole  France  191 

M.  Lantaigne  and  the  Latin  professor,  M.  Bergeret,  the 
only  persons  in  the  whole  town  who  "  s'interessaient 
aux  idees  generales."  They  had  thrilled  over  the 
murder  of  Madame  Houssieu,  and  laughed  at  the 
sophistications  of  M.  de  Terremondre,  the  antiquary. 
L'Orme  du  Mail  ended  like  a  volume  of  Tristram  Shandy, 
nowhere  in  particular.  We  laid  it  down  with  the 
sentence,  "  Noemi  est  de  force  a  faire  un  eveque;" 
saying  to  ourselves,  "  Will  she  do  it  ?  "  And  now  that 
we  have  read  Le  Mannequin  d'Osier,  we  know  as  little 
as  ever  what  she  can  do. 

But  we  know  many  other  things,  and  we  are  not 
quite  happy.  Le  Mannequin  d'Osier  is  not  so  gay  a 
book  as  its  predecessor,  and  the  Pyrrhonism  of  M. 
Anatole  France  seems  to  have  deepened  upon  him.  The 
air  of  insouciance  which  hung  over  the  sun-lighted  Mall 
has  faded  away.  M.  Bergeret  sits  there  no  longer,  or 
but  very  seldom,  arguing  with  M.  I'Abbe  Lantaigne ;  the 
clouds  are  closing  down  on  the  fierce  Abbe  himself,  and 
he  will  never  be  Bishop  of  Tourcoing.  In  the  new  book, 
M.  Bergeret,  who  took  a  secondary  place  in  L'Orme  du 
Mail,  comes  into  predominance.  His  sorrows  and 
squalor,  the  misfortunes  of  his  domestic  life,  his  con- 
sciousness of  his  own  triviahty  of  character  and  medio- 
crity of  brain — those  are  subjected  to  cruel  analysis. 
The  difference  between  L'Orme  du  Mail  and  Le  Manne- 
quin d'Osier  is  that  between  the  tone  of  Sterne  and  of 
Swift.  The  comparison  of  Madame  Bergeret,  by  her 
husband,  to  an  obsolete  and  inaccurate  Latin  lexicon 
is  extremely  in  the  manner  of  A  Tale  of  a  Tub,  and  the 
horribly  cynical  and  entertaining  discussion  as  to  the 
criminal  responsibility  of  the  young  butcher  Lecoeur — 
who  has  murdered  an  old  woman  in  circumstances  of 
the  least  attenuated  hideousness,  but  who  gains  the 


192  French  Profiles 

sympathy  of  the  prison  chaplain — is  exactly  in  the 
temper  of  the  "  Examination  of  Certain  Abuses."  It  is 
curious  to  find  this  Swift-hke  tone  proceeding  out  of  the 
Shandean  spirit  which  has  of  late  marked  the  humour 
of  M.  Anatole  France.  He  is  so  little  occupied  with 
English  ideas  that  he  is  certainly  unconscious  of  the 
remarkable  resemblance  between  his  reflections  as  to 
the  nationalisation  of  certain  forms  of  private  property 
at  the  Revolution — "  en  quel  que  sorte  un  retour  k 
I'ancien  regime,"  and  a  famous  page  of  Carlyle. 

Around  that  dressmaker's  dummy  of  Madame  Bergeret, 
which  gives  its  name  to  the  book,  there  gather  innumera- 
ble ideas,  whimsical,  melancholy,  contradictory,  ingeni- 
ous, profound.  The  peculiar  obscurity  and  helplessness 
of  poor  M.  Bergeret,  compiling  a  Virgilius  Nauticus  with 
his  desk  cramped  by  an  enormous  plaster  cylinder  in 
front  of  it,  and  the  terrible  dummy  behind  it,  exacer- 
bated by  his  indigence  and  his  mediocrity,  by  the 
infideUties  of  Madame  Bergeret  and  the  instabiUty  of 
his  favourite  pupils,  his  abject  passivity,  like  that  of  a 
deUcate,  sentient  thing,  possessing  neither  tongue,  nor 
hands,  nor  feet — all  this  forms  in  the  end  a  sinister 
picture.  Is  M.  Anatole  France  mocking  his  own  kith 
and  kin  ?  Is  the  most  brilliant  man  of  letters  that  the 
modem  system  of  education  in  France  has  produced 
holding  that  very  system  up  to  ridicule  ?  We  might 
warn  him  to  take  care  that  the  fate  of  Orpheus  does  not 
overtake  him,  were  not  his  tact  and  rapidity  equal  to 
his  penetration.  We  are  quite  sure  that,  like  M.  Bergeret 
when  M.  Roux  recited  his  incomprehensible  poem  in 
vers  litres,  M.  Anatole  France  will  always  know  the  right 
moment  to  be  silent  "  for  fear  of  affronting  the  Unknown 
Beauty." 


M.  Anatole  France  193 


HiSTOIRE  COMIQUE 

The  intelligent  part  of  the  Enghsh  public  has  been 
successfully  dragooned  into  the  idea  that  M.  Anatole 
France  is  the  most  ingenious  of  the  younger  writers  of 
Europe.  It  is  extraordinary,  but  very  fortunate,  that 
the  firm  expression  of  an  opinion  on  the  part  of  a  few 
expert  persons  whose  views  are  founded  on  principle 
and  reason  still  exercises  a  very  great  authority  on  the 
better  class  of  readers.  When  it  ceases  to  do  so  the  reign 
of  chaos  will  have  set  in.  However,  it  is  for  the  present 
admitted  in  this  country  that  M.  Anatole  France,  not 
merely  is  not  as  the  Georges  Ohnets  are,  but  that  he  is 
a  great  master  of  imagination  and  style.  Yet,  one  can 
but  wonder  how  many  of  his  dutiful  English  admirers 
really  enjoy  his  books — how  many,  that  is  to  say,  go 
deeper  down  than  the  epigrams  and  the  picturesqueness ; 
how  many  perceive,  in  colloquial  phrase,  what  it  is  he 
is  "  driving  at,"  and,  having  perceived,  still  admire  and 
enjoy.  It  is  not  so  difficult  to  understand  that  there 
are  English  people  who  appreciate  the  writings  of  Ibsen 
and  of  Tolstoi,  and  even,  to  sink  fathoms  below  these, 
of  D'Annunzio,  because  although  all  these  are  exotic 
in  their  relation  to  our  national  habits  of  mind,  they 
are  direct.  But  Anatole  France — do  his  English 
admirers  reahse  what  a  heinous  crime  he  commits  ? — 
for  all  his  lucidity  and  gentleness  and  charm,  Anatole 
France  is  primarily,  he  is  almost  exclusively,  an  ironist. 

In  the  literary  decalogue  of  the  English  reader  the 
severest  prohibition  is  "  Thou  shalt  not  commit  irony  !  " 
This  is  the  unpardonable  offence.  Whatever  sentiments 
a  writer  wishes  to  enforce,  he  has  a  chance  of  toleration 
in  this  country,  if  he  takes  care  to  make  his  language 
exactly  tally  with  his  intention.  But  once  let  him 
o 


194  French  Profiles 

adopt  a  contrary  method,  and  endeavour  to  inculcate 
his  meaning  in  words  of  a  different  sense,  and  his  auditors 
fly  from  him.  No  one  who  has  endeavoured  for  the  last 
hundred  years  to  use  irony  in  England  as  an  imaginative 
medium  has  escaped  failure.  However  popular  he  has 
been  until  that  moment,  his  admirers  then  slip  away  from 
him,  silently,  as  Tennyson's  did  when  he  wrote  the  later 
sections  of  Maud,  and  still  more  strikingly  as  Matthew 
Arnold's  did  when  he  published  Friendship's  Garland. 
The  result  of  the  employment  of  irony  in  this  country 
is  that  people  steal  noiselessly  away  from  the  ironist  as 
if  he  had  been  guilty  in  their  presence  of  a  social  incon- 
gruity. Is  it  because  the  great  example  of  irony  in  our 
language  is  the  cruel  dissimulation  of  Swift  ?  Is  it  that 
our  nation  was  wounded  so  deeply  by  that  sarcastic  pen 
that  it  has  suspected  ever  since,  in  every  ironic  humorist, 
"  the  smiler  with  the  knife  "  ? 

But  the  irony  of  M.  Anatole  France,  like  that  of 
Renan,  and  to  a  much  higher  degree,  is,  on  the  contrary, 
beneficent.  It  is  a  tender  and  consolatory  raillery, 
based  upon  compassion.  His  greatest  delight  is  found 
in  observing  the  inconsistencies,  the  illusions  of  human 
life,  but  never  for  the  purpose  of  wounding  us  in  them, 
or  with  them.  His  genius  is  essentially  benevolent  and 
pitiful.  This  must  not,  however,  blind  us  to  the  fact 
that  he  is  an  ironist,  and  perhaps  the  most  original  in  his 
own  sphere  who  has  ever  existed.  Unless  we  see  this 
plainly,  we  are  not  prepared  to  comprehend  him  at  all, 
and  if  our  temperaments  are  so  Anglo-Saxon  as  to  be 
impervious  to  this  form  of  approach,  we  shall  do  best 
to  cease  to  pretend  that  we  appreciate  M.  Anatole  France. 
To  come  to  a  case  in  point,  the  very  title  of  the  Histoire 
Comigue  is  a  dissimulation.  The  idea  of  calling  this 
tale  of  anguish  and  disillusion  a  "  funny  story  "  would 


M.  Anatole  France  195 

certainly  baffle  us,  if  we  did  not,  quite  by  chance,  in 
the  course  of  a  conversation,  come  upon  the  explanation. 
Constantin  Marc,  discussing  the  suicide  of  the  actor 
Chevalier,  "  le  trouvait  comique,  c'est-^-dire  appartenant 
aux  comediens."  And  this  gives  the  keynote  to  the 
title  and  to  the  tale ;  it  is  a  story  about  men  and  women 
who  deal  with  the  phenomenal  sides  of  things,  and  who 
act  life  instead  of  experiencing  it.  It  is  a  book  in  which 
the  personages,  with  the  greatest  calmness,  do  and  say 
the  most  terrible  things,  and  the  irony  consists  in  the 
mingled  gravity  and  levity  with  which  they  do  and  say 
them. 

The  design  of  the  author,  as  always — as  most  of  all 
in  that  most  exquisite  of  his  books,  Le  Jardin  d'J^picure 
— is  to  warn  mankind  against  being  too  knowing  and 
too  elaborate.  Be  simple,  he  says,  and  be  content  to  be 
deceived,  or  you  cannot  be  happy.  Doctor  Trublet,  in 
the  Histoire  Comique,  the  wise  physician  who  attends 
the  theatre,  and  whom  the  actresses  call  Socrates, 
exclaims,  "  Je  tiens  boutique  de  mensonages.  Je 
soulage,  je  console.  Peut-on  consoler  et  soulager  sans 
mentir  ?  "  This  is  a  characteristic  Anatolian  paradox, 
and  no  one  who  has  followed  the  author's  teaching  will 
find  any  difficulty  in  comprehending  it.  Over  and  over 
again  he  has  preached  that  intelligence  is  vanity,  that 
the  more  we  know  about  life  the  less  we  can  endure 
the  anguish  of  its  impact.  He  says  somewhere — is  it 
not  in  Le  Lys  Rouge  ? — that  the  soul  of  man  feeds  on 
chimeras.  Take  this  fabulous  nourishment  from  us, 
and  you  spread  the  banquet  of  science  before  us  in  vain. 
We  starve  on  the  insufficiency  of  a  diet  which  has  been 
deprived  of  all  our  absurd  traditional  errors,  "  nos  id6es 
betes,  augustes  et  salutaires."  It  is  strange  that  all  the 
subtlety  of  this  marvellous  brain  should  have  found  its 


196  French   Profiles 

way  back  to  the  axiom,  Unless  ye  become  as  little  children, 
ye  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

These  reflections  may  bewilder  those  who  take  up  the 
Histoire  Comique  as  a  work  of  mere  entertainment. 
They  may  even  be  scandalised  by  the  story ;  and  indeed 
to  find  it  edifying  at  all,  it  is  needful  to  be  prepared  for 
edification.  Novelists  are  like  the  three  doctors  whom, 
at  a  critical  moment,  Mme.  Douce  recommends  to  be 
called  in.  They  were  all  clever  doctors,  but  Mme. 
Douce  could  not  find  the  address  of  the  first,  the  second 
had  a  bad  character,  and  the  third  was  dead.  M. 
Anatole  France  belongs  to  the  first  category,  but  we 
must  take  care  that  we  know  his  address.  In  the 
Histoire  Comique  he  has  quitted  his  series  called  Histoire 
Coniemporaine,  and,  we  regret,  M.  Bergerat.  Nor  has 
he  returned,  as  we  admit  we  hoped  he  had  done,  to  the 
Rotisserie  de  la  Reine  Pedauque,  and  the  enchanting 
humours  of  his  eighteenth  century.  He  has  written  a  novel 
of  to-day,  of  the  same  class  as  Le  Lys  Rouge.  He  has 
taken  the  coulisses  of  a  great  theatre  as  the  scene  of  the 
very  simple  intrigue  of  his  story,  which  is,  as  always 
with  M.  Anatole  France,  more  of  a  chronicle  than  a 
novel,  and  extremely  simple  in  construction. 

He  has  chosen  the  theatre  for  his  scene,  one  may 
conjecture,  because  of  the  advantage  it  offers  to  a  narra- 
tor who  wishes  to  distinguish  sharply  between  emotions 
and  acts.  It  troubles  M.  Anatole  France  that  people 
are  never  natural.  They  scarcely  ever  say  a  thing 
because  they  think  it.  They  say  it  because  it  seems 
the  proper  thing  to  say,  and  it  is  extremely  rare  to  find 
any  one  who  is  perfectly  natural.  In  this  book  Felicie 
Nanteuil  congratulates  herself  that  her  lover,  Robert 
de  Ligny,  is  natural ;  but  that  is  her  illusion ;  he  is  not. 
This  contrast  between  what  people  feel  and  think  and 


M.  Anatolc  France  197 

what  they  say  is  projected  in  the  highest  rehef  upon  the 
theatre.  A  violent  symbol  of  this  is  shown  in  the  great 
scene  where  the  actress,  fresh  from  the  funeral  of  the 
man  whose  jealousy  has  destroyed  her  happiness  for 
ever,  is  obliged,  at  a  rehearsal,  to  repeat  over  and  over 
the  phrase,  "  Mon  cousin,  je  suis  eveillee  toute  joyeuse 
ce  matin." 

It  would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  point  to  a  single  book 
which  M.  Anatole  France  has  published  in  which  his 
theory  that  only  two  things,  beauty  and  goodness,  are 
of  any  importance  in  life,  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  less 
prominent  than  in  his  Histoire  Comique.  But  it  prevails 
here,  too,  we  shall  find,  if  we  are  not  hasty  in  judgment. 
And  if  we  do  not  care  to  examine  the  philosophy  of  the 
story,  and  to  reconcile  its  paradoxes  with  ethical  truth, 
we  can  at  least  enjoy  the  sobriety,  the  precision,  the 
elasticity  of  its  faultless  style.  If  the  reader  prefers  to 
do  so,  he  may  take  Histoire  Comique  simply  as  a 
melancholy  and  somewhat  sensuous  illustration  of  the 
unreasonable  madness  of  love,  and  of  the  insufficiency 
of  art,  with  all  its  discipline,  to  regulate  the  turbulent 
spirit  of  youth. 

1903. 


PIERRE  LOTI 


PIERRE  LOTI 

It  is  one  of  the  advantages  of  foreign  criticism  that  it 
can  stand  a  little  aloof  from  the  movement  of  a  litera- 
ture, and  be  unaffected  by  the  passing  fluctuations  of 
fashion.  It  is  not  obliged  to  take  into  consideration  the 
political  or  social  accidents  which  may  affect  the  reputa- 
tion of  an  author  at  home.  The  sensitive  and  dreamy 
traveller  whose  name  stands  at  the  head  of  this  page 
was,  for  ten  years  after  his  first  appearance  with  that 
delicious  fantasia  which  he  called  Raharu,  but  which  the 
public  insisted  on  knowing  as  Le  Manage  de  Loti,  the 
spoiled  favourite  of  the  Parisian  press.  His  writings  of 
this  first  period  have  been  frequently  examined  in 
England,  by  no  one,  however,  so  delicately  and  ex- 
haustively as  by  Mr.  Henry  James.  In  1891  "  Pierre 
Loti  "  (whose  real  name,  of  course,  is  Captain  Louis 
Marie  Julien  Viaud)  was  elected  a  member  of  the  French 
Academy.  His  candidature  began  in  mischief,  as  we 
read  in  the  Journal  of  Goncourt,  and  in  jest  it  ended. 
His  discours  de  reception  may  have  been  a  very  diverting 
document,  but  it  could  not  be  considered  a  wise  one. 
The  merry  sailor  had  his  joke,  and  lost  his  public — that 
is  to  say,  not  to  exaggerate,  he  alienated  the  graver 
part  of  it.  Since  that  time  there  has  been  a  marked 
disposition  in  French  criticism  to  reduce  Pierre  Loti's 
pretensions,  to  insist  upon  "  showing  him  his  place." 
If  the  attention  paid  him  before  was  excessive,  so  has 
been  the  neglect  which  has  since  been  his  portion. 
Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  has  been  perfectly  sane; 


202  French   Profiles 

neither  one  nor  the  other  should  prevent  a  foreign  critic 
from  endeavouring,  from  the  vantage-ground  of  dis- 
tance, to  discover  the  place  in  contemporary  literature 
held  by  an  artist  whose  range  is  limited,  but  who 
possesses  exquisite  sensibilities  and  a  rare  faculty  of 
notation.  In  the  following  pages  I  have  successively 
examined  the  main  pubhcations  of  Pierre  Loti  since  the 
crisis  in  his  literary  fortunes. 

Le  Di:sERT 

This  is  the  first  work  of  importance  which  Pierre  Loti 
has  pubHshed  since  he  was  made  an  Academician,  for 
Fantome  d'Orient  exceeded  the  permission  given  to  its 
author  to  be  sentimental  and  languishing,  while  Matelot, 
in  spite  of  certain  tender  pages,  was  distinctly  below 
his  mark.  The  disturbance  caused  by  his  surprising 
entry  into  the  Mazarin  Palace  must  now  have  passed 
away,  for,  in  his  new  book  he  is  eminently  himself 
again.  This,  at  all  events,  is  du  meilleur  Loti,  and  the 
patient  readers  of  fifteen  previous  volumes  know  what 
that  means.  There  is  no  more  curious  phenomenon  in 
the  existing  world  of  letters  than  the  fascination  of  Loti. 
Here  is  a  man  and  a  writer  of  a  thousand  faults,  and  we 
forgive  them  all.  He  is  a  gallant  sailor,  and  he  recounts 
to  us  his  timidities  and  his  effeminacies ;  we  do  not  care. 
He  is  absolutely  without  what  we  call  "  taste  " ;  he 
exploits  the  weakness  of  his  mother  and  the  death-bed 
of  his  aunt;  it  makes  no  difference  to  us.  Irritated 
travellers  of  the  precise  cast  say  that  he  is  inaccurrate ; 
no  matter.  Moralists  throw  up  their  hands  and  their 
eyes  at  Aziyade  and  Chrysantheme  and  Suleima;  well, 
for  the  moment,  we  are  tired  of  being  moral.  The  fact 
is,  that  for  those  who  have  passed  under  the  spell  of 
Loti,  he  is  irresistible.     He  wields  the  authority  of  the 


Pierre  Loti  203 

charmer,  of  the  magician,  and  he  leads  us  whither  he 
chooses.  The  critical  spirit  is  powerless  against  a  pen 
so  delicately  sensitive,  so  capable  of  pla5dng  with 
masterly  effect  on  all  the  finer  stops  of  our  emotions. 

Even  the  sempiternal  youth  of  Loti,  however,  is 
waning  away,  and  we  are  sensible  in  Le  Desert  that  the 
vitahty  of  the  writer  is  not  what  it  was  when  he  made 
his  first  escapades  in  Senegambia,  in  Montenegro,  in 
Tahiti.  Doubtless,  the  austerity  of  the  theme  excludes 
indiscretion;  there  is  little  room  for  scandal  in  the 
monastery  of  Mount  Sinai  or  in  the  desert  of  Tih.  But 
the  secret  of  the  sovereign  charm  of  Loti  has  always 
been  the  exactitude  with  which  his  writing  has  tran- 
scribed his  finest  and  most  fleeting  emotions.  He  has 
held  up  his  pages  like  wax  tablets  and  has  pressed  them 
to  his  heart.  This  deep  sincerity,  not  really  obscured 
to  any  degree  by  his  transparent  affectations,  has  given 
his  successive  books  their  poignancy.  And  he  has 
always  known  how  to  combine  this  sincerity  with  tact, 
no  hving  writer  understanding  more  artfully  how  to 
arrange  and  to  suggest,  to  heighten  mystery  or  to  arrest 
an  indolent  attention.  Hence  it  would  not  be  like  him 
to  conceal  the  advances  of  middle  age,  or  to  attempt 
to  deceive  us.  We  find  in  Le  Desert  a  Loti  who  is  as 
faithful  to  his  forty-five  years  as  the  author  of  Le 
Roman  d'un  Spahi  was  to  his  five-and-twenty.  The 
curiosity  in  mankind,  and  in  particular  in  himself,  seems 
to  have  grown  less  acute;  the  outlook  on  the  world  is 
clearer  and  firmer,  less  agitated  and  less  hysterical. 
The  central  charm,  the  exquisite  manner  of  express- 
ing perfectly  lucid  impressions,  remains  absolutely 
unmodified. 

The  book  is  the  record  of  an  expedition  which  occupied 
just  four  weeks.    Armed  with  a  safe-conduct  from  the 


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powerful  Seid,  Omar  El  Senoussi  El  Hosni,  at  the  end 
of  February,  1894,  and  in  company  of  a  noble  friend 
whose  name  does  not  occur  in  his  pages,  although 
it  constantly  occupied  the  newspapers  of  Paris,  Pierre 
Loti  started  from  Cairo  on  his  way  to  Palestine.  His 
great  design  was  to  pass  through  the  heart  of  Idumzea, 
by  the  route  of  Petra,  it  having  been  ten  years  since 
any  European  had  crossed  that  portion  of  the  desert. 
The  sheik  of  Petra,  it  appears,  is  in  revolt  against  both 
Turkey  and  Egypt,  and  has  closed  a  route  which  in 
Stanley's  day  was  open  and  comparatively  easy.  Loti 
was  unable,  as  will  be  seen,  to  achieve  his  purpose,  but 
a  unique  fortune  befell  him.  In  the  meanwhile,  he 
started  by  Suez,  landing  on  the  other  side  of  the  gulf, 
ascended  Sinai,  descended  again  eastward,  reached  the 
sea,  and  marched  beside  it  up  to  the  head  of  the  bay, 
halting  in  that  strange  little  town  of  Akabah,  which 
represents  the  Eziongaber  of  Scripture  and  the  iElama 
of  the  Crusaders.  From  this  point  he  should  have 
started  for  Petra;  but  as  that  proved  quite  impossible, 
the  expedition  held  a  little  to  the  west  and  proceeded 
north  through  the  singular  and  rarely  visited  desert  of 
Tih,  the  land  of  the  Midianites  and  the  Amalekites. 
On  Good  Friday  they  crossed  the  frontier  of  Palestine, 
and  three  days  later  dismounted  in  one  of  the  most 
ancient  and  most  mysterious  cities  in  the  world,  Gaza 
of  the  Philistines,  a  land  of  ruins  and  of  dust,  a  cluster 
of  aged  minarets  and  domes  girdled  by  palm-trees. 
The  book  closes  with  the  words,  "  To-morrow,  at  break 
of  day,  we  shall  start  for  Jerusalem." 

The  sentiment  of  the  desert  has  never  been  so  finely 
rendered  before.  Without  emphasis,  in  his  calm,  pro- 
gressive manner,  Loti  contrives  to  plunge  us  gradually 
in  the  colour  and  silence  and  desolation  of  the  wilder- 


Pierre  Loti 


205 


ness.  His  talent  for  bringing  up  before  the  eye  delicate 
and  complicated  schemes  of  aerial  colour  was  never 
more  admirably  exercised.  He  makes  us  realise  that 
we  have  left  behind  us  the  littleness  and  squalor  of 
humanity,  lost  in  the  hushed  immensity  of  the  land- 
scape. There  are  no  crises  in  his  narrative;  it  proceeds 
slowly  onward,  and,  by  a  strange  natural  magic  in  the 
narrator,  we  sweep  onward  with  him.  The  absence  of 
salient  features  concentrates  our  attention  on  the  vast 
outlines  of  the  scene.  As  they  left  the  shores  of  the 
Gulf  of  Suez,  the  travellers  quitted  their  European 
dress,  and  with  it  they  seemed  to  have  left  the  western 
world  behind.  Every  night,  as  they  camped  in  dark- 
ness, the  granite  peaks  still  incandescent  about  them, 
the  air  full  of  warm  aromatic  perfumes,  they  descended 
into  a  life  without  a  future  and  without  a  past,  into  a 
dim  land  somewhere  behind  the  sun  and  the  moon. 

This  is  the  class  of  impression  which  Pierre  Loti  is 
particularly  fortunate  in  rendering.  We  turn  from  his 
pages  to  those  of  a  traveller  who  was,  in  his  own  class, 
an  admirable  writer,  a  quick  and  just  observer.  Forty 
years  before  Loti  set  forth.  Canon  (afterwards  Dean) 
Stanley  attempted  almost  exactly  the  same  adventure, 
and  his  Sinai  and  Palestine  is  still  a  classic.  It  is  very 
instructive  to  see  how  the  same  scenes  struck  two 
such  distinct  minds,  both  so  inteUigent  and  subtle,  but 
the  one  a  philosopher,  the  other  an  artist.  One  of  the 
most  singular  spots  on  the  earth's  surface  must  be  the 
desolate  shore  of  the  still  more  desolate  Gulf  of  Akabah. 
This  is  how  Stanley  regarded  it : — 

"  What  a  sea  !  what  a  shore  !  From  the  dim  silvery 
mountains  on  the  further  Arabian  coast,  over  the  blue 
waters  of  the  sea,  melting  into  colourless  clearness  as 
they  roll  up  the  shelly  beach — that  beach  red  with  the 


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red  sand,  or  red  granite  gravel,  that  pours  down  from 
the  chffs  above — those  diffs  sometimes  deep  red,  some- 
times yellow  and  purple,  and  above  them  all  the  blue 
cloudless  sky  of  Arabia.  Of  the  red  sand  and  rocks  I 
have  spoken ;  but,  besides  these,  fragments  of  red  coral 
are  for  ever  being  thrown  up  from  the  shores  below,  and 
it  is  these  coralline  forests  which  form  the  true  '  weeds  ' 
of  this  fantastic  sea.  But,  above  all,  never  did  I  see 
such  shells.  Far  as  your  eye  can  reach  you  can  see 
the  beach  whitening  with  them,  like  bleaching  bones." 

This  is  eloquent,  and  Stanley  is  seldom  so  much 
moved.  But  how  much  broader  is  the  palette  on  Loti's 
thumb,  and  how  much  more  vivid  is  his  fragment  of 
the  same  landscape  : — 

"  L'ensemble  des  choses  est  rose,  mais  il  est  comme 
barre  en  son  milieu  par  une  longue  bande  infinie,  presque 
noire  k  force  d'etre  intensement  bleue,  et  qu'il  faudrait 
peindre  avec  du  bleu  de  Pnisse  pur  legerement  zebre 
de  vert  emeraude.  Cette  bande,  c'est  la  mer,  I'invrai- 
semblable  mer  d'Akabah ;  elle  coupe  le  desert  en  deux, 
nettement,  crument ;  elle  en  fait  deux  parts,  deux  zones 
d'une  couleur  d'hortensia,  d'un  rose  exquis  de  nuage 
de  soir,  ou,  par  opposition  avec  ces  eaux  aux  couleurs 
trop  violentes  et  aux  contours  trop  durs,  tout  semble 
vaporeux,  indecis  a  force  de  miroiter  et  d'eblouir,  ou 
tout  etincelle  de  nacre,  de  granit  et  de  mica,  oii  tout 
tremble  de  chaleur  et  de  mirage." 

The  analysis  of  such  a  passage  as  this,  and  it  is  not 
exceptionally  remarkable,  tends  to  show  the  reader  what 
a  singular,  perhaps  what  an  unprecedented  gift  Loti  has 
for  recording,  with  absolute  precision,  the  shades  and 
details  of  a  visual  effect.  His  travels  in  the  desert,  where 
there  is  scarcely  anything  but  elementary  forms  of  light 


Pierre  Loti  207 

and  colour  to  be  seen,  have  given  him  an  unparalleled 
opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  a  talent  which  is  less 
frequent  than  we  are  apt  to  suppose,  and  which  no 
recent  French  writer  has  possessed  in  equal  measure. 
There  are  pages  oi  Le  Desert  with  which  there  is  nothing 
in  European  literature,  of  their  limited  class,  to  compare, 
except  certain  of  the  atmospheric  pictures  in  Fromentin's 
two  books  and  in  Modern  Painters.  How  bad  this  sort 
of  thing  can  be  in  clumsy  hands,  the  gaudy  sunsets  of 
WiUiam  Black  remind  us.  We  turn  in  horror  from  the 
thought,  and  re-read  the  descriptions  in  Le  Desert  of 
morning  and  evening  from  the  ramparts  of  the  monastery 
on  Mount  Sinai,  of  the  enchanted  oasis  of  Oued-el-Ain, 
of  the  cemetery  of  Akabah  at  midnight.  These,  and  a 
score  more  pictures,  seem  to  pass  in  the  very  reality  of 
vision  before  our  eyes,  as  the  author  quietly  rolls  them 
out  of  the  magic  lantern  of  his  journal. 

The  lover  of  adventure  will  find  nothing  to  excite 
him  in  Loti's  panorama.  The  Bedouins  were  amiable 
and  exacting,  the  expedition  never  lost  its  way,  such 
dangers  as  threatened  it  proved  merely  to  be  mirages. 
If  the  travellers  met  a  panther  in  a  cave,  it  merely  opened 
half  a  yellow  eye ;  if  robbers  hovered  in  the  distance, 
they  never  came  within  rifle  shot.  Sir  Henry  Rider 
Haggard  would  make  our  flesh  creep  in  a  single  para- 
graph more  than  the  amiable  French  pilgrim  does  in  his 
whole  volume.  In  the  deep  and  sonorous  desert  Loti 
went  to  seek,  not  a  sword,  but  peace.  One  central 
impression  remains  with  the  reader,  of  a  great  empty 
red  land,  a  silent  Edom,  red  as  when  Diodorus  Siculus 
described  it  two  thousand  years  ago,  unchanging  in  its 
dry  and  resonant  sterility.  Loti's  book  is  simply  the 
record  of  a  peaceful  promenade,  on  the  backs  of  swaying 


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dromedaries,  across  a  broad  corner  of  this  vague  and 
rose-coloured  infinity. 

1895. 

Jerusalem 

In  the  midst  of  that  persistent  and  maddening  search 
for  novelty  which  is  the  malady,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  absurdity,  of  our  feverish  age,  there  is  present  in 
most  of  us  an  instinct  of  a  diametrically  opposite  nature. 
If  no  quarter  of  a  century  has  ever  flung  itself  against 
the  brazen  door  of  the  future  with  so  crazy  a  determina- 
tion to  break  into  its  secrets,  to  know,  at  all  hazards, 
what  to-morrow  is  to  be  like,  it  is  equally  certain  that 
no  previous  epoch  has  observed  with  so  deep  an  attention 
the  rehcs  of  the  extreme  past,  nor  Ustened  with  an  ear 
bent  so  low  for  a  whisper  from  the  childhood  of  the 
world.  The  bustle  of  modern  life  cannot  destroy  our 
primal  sense  of  the  impressiveness  of  mystery,  and 
nothing  within  our  range  of  ideas  is  so  mysterious  as 
the  life  which  those  led  who  imprinted  on  the  face  of 
our  earth  indelible  marks  of  their  force  two  or  even  three 
thousand  years  ago.  Of  all  the  human  forces  which 
interest  and  perplex,  those  of  the  founders  of  rehgion 
overpower  the  imagination  most.  If  we  can  discover 
on  this  earth  a  city  which  has  been  the  cradle,  not  of 
one  mode  of  faith,  but  of  many  modes,  we  may  be  sure 
that  around  the  crumbling  and  defaced  walls  of  that 
city  a  pecuhar  enchantment  must  depend.  There  is 
but  one  such  place  in  the  world,  and  no  processes  of 
civihsation,  no  removal  of  barriers,  no  telegraphs  or 
railways,  can  part  the  idea  of  Jerusalem  from  its 
extraordinary  charm  of  sacrosanct  remoteness.  The 
pecuUar  sentiment  of  Zion  is  well  expressed  for  us  in 


Pierre  LotI  209 

the  volume  which  Pierre  Loti  has  dedicated  to  it,  a 
book  which  none  of  those  who  propose  to  visit  the 
Holy  Land  should  fail  to  pack  away  in  their  trunks. 
M.  Loti  is  the  charmer  par  excellence  among  living 
writers.  To  him  in  higher  degree  than  to  any  one  else 
is  given  the  power  of  making  us  see  the  object  he 
describes,  and  of  flooding  the  vision  in  the  true,  or  at  all 
events  the  effective,  emotional  atmosphere.  He  has  no 
humour,  or  at  least  he  does  not  allow  it  to  intrude  into 
his  work.  To  take  up  a  book  on  the  Holy  Land,  and  to 
find  it  jocose — what  an  appaUing  thing  that  would  be  ! 
We  fancy  that  Jerusalem  is  one  of  the  few  cities  which 
Mark  Twain  has  never  described.  May  he  long  be 
prevented  from  visiting  it !  A  sense  of  humour  is  an 
excellent  thing  in  its  place ;  but  the  ancient  and  mysteri- 
ous cradles  of  religion  are  not  its  proper  fields  of  exercise. 
Mr.  Jerome's  Three  Men  do  very  well  in  a  Boat ;  but  it 
would  require  the  temper  of  an  archimandrite  to  sojourn 
with  them  in  Jerusalem.  M.  Loti  is  never  funny;  but 
he  is  pre-eminently  sensitive,  acute,  and  sympathetic. 

With  most  of  us  the  idea  of  Jerusalem  was  founded 
in  childhood.  We  retain  the  impression  of  a  clean, 
briUiantly  white  city,  with  flat  roofs  and  a  few  scattered 
domes,  perched  on  the  crag  of  a  mountain,  while  preci- 
pices yawn  below  it  and  a  broken  desert  spreads  around. 
To  enhance  the  whiteness  of  the  shining  town,  the  sky 
had  usually  been  surcharged  with  tempest  by  the  artist. 
We  formed  the  notion  that  if  we  could  climb  to  its 
neatly-fashioned  gates  and  escape  the  terrors  of  the 
dark  gulfs  below,  something  very  exquisite — above  all, 
very  fresh,  trim,  and  lustrous — would  reward  us  inside 
those  strange  ramparts.  It  is  thus  that  Jerusalem 
appears  to-day  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  spiritual 
pilgrims.  The  h3mins  we  sing,  and  the  sermons  we 
p 


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listen  to  support  this  illusion.  They  confound  the 
New  Jerusalem  with  the  old,  and  they  suggest  the 
serenity  and  beauty  of  broad  white  streets  and  saintly 
cahn.  Nothing  could  be  falser  to  fact.  The  real 
Jerusalem  is  what  Lord  Chesterfield  calls,  in  another 
sense,  "  a  heterogeneous  jumble  of  caducity."  It  is  a 
city  that  has  turned  reddish  with  the  concentrated  dust 
of  centuries.  Under  this  coating  of  dust  there  lurk 
fragments  of  all  the  civiUsations  which  have  swept  over 
it,  one  after  the  other,  one  in  the  steps  of  the  other. 

This  is  the  solemnising  (even  the  terrifying)  aspect 
of  Jerusalem.  Its  composite  monuments,  in  their 
melancholy  abandonment,  speak  of  the  horrors  of  its 
historic  past.  Nowhere  can  this  past  be  heard  to  speak 
more  plainly  than  in  the  wonderful  kiosk,  covered  with 
turquoise-coloured  faience,  which  stands  close  to  the 
Mosque  of  Omar  in  the  Haram-esh-Cherif.  M.  Loti 
describes  its  double  row  of  marble  columns  as  a  museum 
of  all  the  debris  of  the  ages.  Here  are  Greek  and  Roman 
capitals,  fragments  of  Byzantine  and  of  Hebrew  archi- 
tecture; and  among  these  comparatively  historic  speci- 
mens there  are  others  of  a  wild  and  unknown  style,  at 
the  sight  of  which  the  imagination  goes  back  to  some 
forgotten  art  of  the  primitive  Jebusites,  the  very  nature 
of  which  is  lost  in  the  obscurity  of  remote  time.  It  is 
the  peculiarity  of  Jerusalem  that,  whilst  nothing  has 
been  completely  preserved,  nothing  has  been  wholly 
lost.  Jealous  rehgions  have  fought  with  one  another 
for  the  possession  of  this  rocky  sanctuary  which  they 
all  have  claimed.  None  has  entirely  succeeded,  and 
gradually  all  have  settled  down  to  an  uneasy  toleration, 
each  scraping  away  the  dust  and  fashioning  an  altar 
for  itself  among  cyclopean  stones  which  were  ancient 
in  the  days  of  Solomon,  inside  fortifications  which  Herod 


Pierre  Loti  2 1 1 

may  have  built  over  the  place  of  martyrdom  of  some 
primitive  and  fabulous  saint. 

At  the  very  foot  of  the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  where 
the  path  has  crossed  the  Kedron  and  is  just  about  to 
mount  again  towards  Gethsemane,  there  is  an  extraor- 
dinary example  of  this  sordid  and  multifarious  sanctity. 
A  melancholy  mausoleum  is  seen,  in  the  midst  of  which 
an  ancient  iron  door  admits  to  the  Tomb  of  the  Virgin, 
a  church  of  the  fourth  century,  which,  for  more  than 
a  thousand  years,  has  been  the  theatre  of  incessant 
ecclesiastical  battle.  At  the  present  moment  the 
Western  Churches  are  excluded  from  this  singular  con- 
venticle; but  the  Greeks,  the  Armenians,  the  S3Tians, 
the  Abyssinians,  the  Copts,  and  even  the  Mahometans, 
make  themselves  at  home  in  it.  The  visitor  enters,  and 
is  met  by  darkness  and  a  smell  of  damp  and  mildew. 
A  staircase,  dimly  perceived  before  him,  leads  down 
into  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  and  presently  introduces 
him  to  a  church,  which  is  more  like  a  grotto  than  a 
human  construction,  and  continues  to  sink  lower  as  he 
proceeds.  This  strange  cavern  is  dimly  lighted  by 
hundreds  of  gold  and  silver  lamps,  of  extreme  antiquity, 
hung  from  the  low  roof  in  wreaths  and  garlands.  Within 
this  agitating  place,  which  is  full  of  dark  comers  and  ends 
of  breakneck  stairs  that  climb  to  nothing,  five  or  six 
reUgions,  each  halting  the  rest,  carry  on  simultaneously 
their  ancient  rituals,  and  everywhere  there  ascend  dis- 
cord of  incoherent  prayer  and  distracted  singing,  with 
candles  waving  and  incense  burning,  processions  in 
mediaeval  brocades  that  disturb  kneeling  pilgrims  in 
the  green  turban  of  Mecca ;  a  chaos  of  conflicting  reUgions 
humming  and  hunying  in  the  darkness  of  this  damp 
and  barbarous  cavern.  Nothing  could  give  a  stronger 
impression  of  the  bewildered  genius  of  Jerusalem. 


212  French   Profiles 

It  was  the  privilege  of  M.  Loti  to  be  admitted  to  the 
arcane  treasuries  of  the  Armenian  Church  in  Jerusalem, 
a  privilege  which,  we  understand  him  to  say,  no  previous 
traveller  has  enjoyed.  Under  the  special  patronage  of 
His  Beatitude  the  Patriarch,  and  after  a  strange  chplo- 
matic  entertainment  of  coffee,  cigarettes,  and  a  conserve 
of  rose-leaves,  the  French  writer  was  permitted  to  visit 
one  of  the  oldest  and  most  curious  churches  in  Jerusalem. 
Its  walls  and  all  its  massive  pillars  are  covered  with  the 
lovely  azure  porcelain  which  is  the  triumph  of  ancient 
Arabic  art.  The  thrones  of  the  Patriarchs  are  wrought 
in  mosaics  of  mother-of-pearl  of  an  almost  prehistoric 
workmanship.  From  the  roof  hang  golden  lamps  and 
ostrich-eggs  mounted  in  silver,  while  the  marble  floors 
are  concealed  from  view  under  thick  Turkey  carpets 
of  extreme  antiquity,  faded  into  exquisite  harmonies 
of  yellow,  blue,  and  rose-colour.  It  was  in  front  of  the 
high  altar,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  profusion  of  superb, 
archaic  decoration,  that  pale  priests,  with  clear-cut 
profiles  and  black  silky  beards,  brought  out  to  M.  Loti 
one  by  one  the  pieces  of  their  incomparable  and  unknown 
Treasure, — a  missal  presented  nearly  seven  hundred  years 
ago  by  a  Queen  of  Cilicia,  mitres  heavy  with  emeralds 
and  pearls,  tiaras  of  gold  and  rubies,  fairy-like  textures 
of  pale  crimson,  embroidered  with  lavish  foliage  of 
pearl-work,  in  which  the  flowers  are  emeralds  and  each 
fruit  is  a  topaz.  Then,  by  little  doors  of  mother-of- 
pearl,  under  ancient  hangings  of  velvet,  through  sacristies 
lined  with  delicate  porcelain,  the  visitor  was  hurried  from 
chapel  to  chapel,  each  stranger  and  more  archaic  than  the 
last,  while  his  conductor,  as  though  speaking  of  the  latest 
historical  event  which  had  come  to  his  knowledge,  loudly 
lamented  the  cruelties  of  that  sacrilegious  king  Khosroes 
II.  and  the  ravages  he  had  committed  in  Jerusalem. 


Pierre  Loti  213 

This  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  surprises  that  the 
sacred  city  reserves  for  pious  visitors.  It  is  a  mass  of 
decrepit  fragments,  a  dust-heap  of  the  religions  of 
centuries  upon  centuries,  preserving  here  and  there, 
under  the  mask  of  its  affliction  and  its  humiliation, 
folded  away  in  its  mysterious  sanctuaries,  remnants  of 
the  beauty  of  the  past  so  complete,  so  isolated,  and  so 
poignant,  that  the  imagination  finds  it  almost  painful 
to  contemplate  them.  "  Jerusalem,  if  thou  hadst 
known,  even  thou,  at  least  in  this  thy  day,  the  things 
which  belong  unto  thy  peace  !  But  now  they  are  hid 
from  thine  eyes." 

1895. 

La  Galilee 

The  trilogy  of  travel  is  now  concluded  with  La  Galilee. 
The  completed  work  certainly  forms  the  most  picturesque 
description  of  the  Holy  Land  and  its  surroundings  which 
has  yet  been  given  to  the  world.  We  close  this  third 
volume  with  a  sense  of  having  really  seen  the  places 
which  had  been  a  sort  of  sacred  mystery  to  us  from 
earhest  childhood.  Loti  is  a  master  of  enchantment, 
and  so  cunningly  combines  the  arts  of  harmony  and 
colour  in  writing  that  he  carries  us,  as  though  we  were 
St.  Thomas,  whither  we  would  not.  In  other  words,  by 
the  strange  and  scarcely  analyzable  charm  of  his  style, 
he  bewitches  us  beyond  our  better  judgment.  But  a 
reaction  comes,  and  we  are  obliged  to  admit  that  in  the 
case  of  La  Galilee  it  has  come  somewhat  soon. 

It  was  only  while  reading  this  third  volume  that  we 
became  conscious  that  Pierre  Loti  was  doing  rather  a 
mechanical  thing.  In  Le  Desert  we  were  ready  to  beheve 
that  nothing  but  the  fascination  of  wild  places  took  him 
across  the  wij[(jerpe^  and  up  into  that  grotesque  shrine 


214  French   Profiles 

of  Christianity  that  lurks  among  the  fierce  pinnacles  of 
Mount  Sinai.  In  Jerusalem,  led  away  by  the  pathos 
of  the  scene  and  the  poignant  grace  of  the  pilgrim's 
reflections,  we  still  persuaded  ourselves  to  see  in  him 
one  who  withdrew  from  the  turmoil  of  the  West  that  he 
might  worship  among  the  dead  upon  Mount  Moriah. 
But  in  La  Galilee  the  illusion  disappears.  Loti  crosses 
Palestine,  embarks  upon  the  Sea  of  Gennesaret,  ascends 
Mount  Hermon,  winds  down  into  the  rose-oasis  of 
Damascus,  no  longer  as  the  insouciant  and  aristocratic 
wanderer,  "  le  Byron  de  nos  jours,"  but  as  a  tourist 
like  ourselves,  wrapped  in  a  burnous,  it  is  true,  and  not 
personally  conducted  by  Messrs.  Cook  &  Sons,  yet  not 
the  less  surely  an  ahen,  manufacturing  copy  for  the 
press.  He  is  revealed  as  the  "  special  correspondent," 
bound,  every  night,  however  weary  he  may  be,  to  "  pan 
out  "  sufficient  description  to  fill  a  certain  space  on  the 
third  page  of  the  "  Figaro." 

There  is  nothing  dishonourable  in  being  a  special 
correspondent,  nor  is  there  a  journalist  living  who  might 
not  envy  Pierre  Loti  the  suppleness  and  fluid  felicity  of 
his  paragraphs.  But  this  is  not  the  light  in  which  we 
have  learned  to  know  him.  He  has  very  carefully  taught 
us  to  regard  him  as  one  to  whom  literature  is  indifferent, 
who  never  looks  at  a  newspaper,  whose  impressions  of 
men  and  manners  are  formed  in  lands  whither  his  duties 
as  a  sailor  have  casually  brought  him,  who  writes  of  them 
out  of  the  fullness  of  his  heart,  in  easy  exquisite  numbers 
cast  forth  as  the  bird  casts  its  song.  We  have  had  an 
idea  that  Loti  never  looks  at  a  proof,  that  some  comrade 
picks  up  the  loose  leaves  as  they  flutter  in  the  forecastle, 
and  sends  them  surreptitiously  to  kind  M.  Calmann 
Levy.  When  he  is  elected  to  the  French  Academy,  he 
is'the  Ijist  to  know  it,  and  wonders,  as  he  is  rowed  back 


Pierre  Loti  215 

from  some  Algerian  harbour,  what  his  men  are  shouting 
about  on  board  his  ship.  All  this  is  the  legend  of  Loti, 
and  we  have  nourished  and  cherished  it,  but  it  will  not 
bear  the  fierce  hght  that  beats  upon  La  Galilee.  We 
cannot  pretend  any  longer;  we  cannot  force  ourselves 
to  think  of  a  romantic  pilgrim  of  the  sea,  flung  ashore 
at  Aleppo  and  wandering  vaguely  up  into  the  spurs  of 
Carmel.  Certainly  not !  This  is  a  Monsieur  Loti  who 
is  travelling  in  the  pay  of  an  enterprising  Parisian 
newspaper,  who  does  his  work  very  conscientiously, 
but  who  is  sometimes  not  a  little  bored  with  it. 

The  reader,  who  finds  out  that  he  has  been  played 
with,  grows  captious  and  unjust.  The  result  of  dis- 
covering that  Pierre  Loti,  notwithstanding  the  burnous 
and  the  Arab  carpets,  is  nothing  better  than  a  glorified 
commis  voyageur,  has  made  us  crusty.  We  are  displeased 
that  he  should  travel  so  fast,  and  be  willing  to  scamper 
through  the  whole  of  "  ce  pays  sacre  de  Galil "  in  six 
weeks.  It  is  really  no  matter  of  ours  whether  he  Hngers 
or  not,  and  yet  we  resent  that  he  should  push  on  as 
monotonously  as  any  of  the  Cookites  do,  about  whom 
he  is  so  sarcastic.  Our  disgust  invades  us  even  when 
we  read  the  famous  descriptions ;  we  feel,  not  that  they 
impressed  themselves  irresistibly  upon  him,  but  that 
he  went  out  for  the  purpose  of  making  them,  and  made 
them  as  fast  as  he  could.  He  becomes,  to  our  affronted 
fancy,  a  sort  of  huge  and  infinitely  elaborate  photo- 
graphic machine,  making  exquisite  kodaks  as  his  guides 
hurry  him  along.  All  this,  we  admit,  is  very  unfair,  but 
it  exemplifies  the  danger  of  admitting  the  public  too 
far  into  the  works  of  the  musical  box.  We  find  our- 
selves glancing  back  at  our  old  favourites  with  horrid 
new  suspicions.  Was  he  paid  so  much  a  fine  to  make 
love  to  his  plaintive  bride  in  Tahiti  ?     Did  some  news- 


2 1 6  French   Profiles 

paper  engage  him  to  pursue  Aziyade  so  madly  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Stamboul  ?  Was  the  Press 
kept  waiting  while  Tante  Claire  was  dying  ?  These  are 
hideous  questions,  and  we  thrust  them  from  us,  but 
Pierre  Loti  should  really  be  made  to  realise  that  the 
romantic  attachment  which  his  readers  bear  him  is  a 
tender  plant.  He  holds  them  because  he  is  so  wayv\'om 
and  desolate,  but  if  he  read  his  Shelley  he  would  learn 
that  "  desolation  is  a  delicate  thing." 

We  would  not  be  supposed  to  deny  that  La  Galilee 
is  full  of  pages  which  Loti  only  could  write,  pictures 
which  he  alone  could  paint.  Here  is  a  marvellous 
vignette  of  that  sombre  and  sepulchral  city  of  Nablous, 
so  rarely  visited  by  Christians,  so  isolated  in  its  notorious 
bigotry,  which  an  outrage  on  a  small  Protestant  mission 
has  just  brought  prominently  before  us.  Here  is 
Nazareth  in  twilight,  with  the  moon  flooding  the  bound- 
less gulf  of  grasses  that  stretches  from  its  rocky  feet. 
Very  impressive  is  the  picture  of  the  dead  city  of  Tiberias, 
along  whose  solemn  and  deserted  quays,  once  thronged 
with  shipping,  no  vessel  has  been  moored  for  centuries, 
looking  down  at  the  reflection  of  its  crenelated  walls  in 
the  tideless  waters  of  Gennesaret.  Beautiful,  too,  and 
"  du  meilleur  Loti  "  is  the  description  of  the  descent 
from  the  grey  terraces  of  Hermon,  to  that  miraculous 
oasis  in  the  Idumean  desert  where  Damascus  lifts  its 
rose-coloured  minarets  and  domes  out  of  pale-green 
orchards  of  poplars  and  pomegranates,  beneath  whose 
boughs  the  rivulets  run  sparkling  over  a  carpet  of  iris 
and  anemone.  It  is  in  forming  impressions  such  as 
these,  where  no  detail  escapes  the  narrator's  eye,  and 
not  a  word  is  said  too  little  or  too  much,  that  Pierre 
Loti  asserts  that  supremacy  as  a  master  of  description 
of  which  no  carelessness  and  no  inconsistency  can  deprive 


Pierre  Loti  217 

him.     He  has  Uttle  pretension  to  being  an  intellectual 
force  in  literature,  but  as  a  proficient  in  this  species  of 
sensuous  legerdemain  he  has  had  no  rival,  and  is  not 
hkely  soon  to  be  surpassed. 
1896. 


Figures  et  Choses  qui  passaient 

It  has  long  been  the  custom  of  Pierre  Loti  to  gather 
together  at  intervals  those  short  pieces  of  his  prose 
which  have  not  found  their  place  in  any  consecutive 
fiction  or  record  of  travel.  In  the  case  of  most  authors, 
even  of  the  better  class,  such  chips  from  the  workshop 
would  excite  but  a  very  languid  interest,  or  might  be 
judged  wholly  impertinent.  All  that  Loti  does,  however, 
on  whatever  scale,  is  done  with  so  much  care  and  is  so 
characteristic  of  him,  that  his  admirers  find  some  of  their 
richest  feeists  in  these  his  baskets  of  broken  meat.  The 
genuine  Lotist  is  a  fanatic,  who  can  give  no  other  reason 
for  the  faith  that  is  in  him  than  this,  that  the  mere  voice 
of  this  particular  writer  is  an  irresistible  enchantment. 
It  is  not  the  story,  or  the  chain  of  valuable  thoughts,  or 
the  important  information  supplied  by  Pierre  Loti  that 
enthrals  his  admirers.  It  is  the  music  of  the  voice,  the 
incomparable  magic  of  the  mode  in  which  the  mournful, 
sensuous,  exquisite  observations  are  delivered.  He  is 
a  Pied  Piper,  and  as  for  his  admirers,  poor  rats,  as  he 
pipes,  they  follow,  follow.  He  who  writes  these  lines  is 
always  among  the  bewitched. 

The  convinced  Lotist,  then,  will  not  be  discouraged 
to  hear  that  Figures  et  Choses  qui  passaient,  which  is  the 
twentieth  tune  (or  volume)  which  this  piper  has  played 
to  us,  is  made  up  entirely  of  bits  and  airs  that  seem  to 
have  lost  their  way  from  other  works.    On  the  contrary. 


2i8  French   Profiles 

it  will  amuse  and  stimulate  him  to  notice  that  Passage 
d'Enfant  suggests  a  lost  chapter  of  Le  Livre  de  la  Pitie 
et  de  la  Mort  ;  that  Instant  de  Recueillement  reads  like  a 
rejected  preface  to  the  novel  called  Ramuntcho  ;  that 
Passage  de  Sultan  is  a  sort  of  appendix  to  FantSme 
d'Orient ;  and  that  Passage  de  Carmencita  forms  a  quite 
unexpected  prelude  to  Le  Manage  de  Loti.  But  this 
at  least  may  be  said,  that  this  heau  gabier  of  literature, 
the  fantastic  and  wayward  sailor  so  signally  unlike  the 
kind  of  mariner  (with  a  pigtail,  and  hitching  up  white 
ducks),  who  still  continues  to  be  our  haunting  maritime 
convention — this  complicated  and  morbid  Alcade  de  la 
Met  who  walks  so  uncompromisingly  the  quarter-deck 
of  the  French  Academy,  has  never  published  a  book 
which  more  tyrannically  presupposes  an  acquaintance 
with  all  his  previous  works.  But  he  knows  our  frailty ; 
and  I  will  make  a  confession  which  may  go  to  the  heart 
of  other  Lotists.  There  is  one  piece  in  Figures  et  Choses 
which  certainly  ought  never  to  have  been  written.  I 
hope  to  screw  up  my  courage,  presently,  to  reprove  it 
by  name;  it  is  horrible,  unseemly.  But  I  have  read 
every  word  of  it,  slowly,  with  gusto,  as  we  read  our 
Loti,  balancing  the  sentences,  drawing  the  phrases  over 
the  palate.  It  is  a  vice,  this  Lotism ;  and  I  am  not  sure 
that  there  ought  not  to  be  a  society  to  put  it  down. 
Yet  if  I  were  persuaded  to  sign  a  pledge  never  to  read 
another  page  of  Loti,  I  know  that  I  should  immediately 
break  it. 

Yet  Loti  does  everything  which,  according  to  the 
rules,  he  should  not  do.  Passage  d'Enfant,  with  which 
this  volume  opens,  is  a  study  such  as  no  Englishman 
can  conceive  himself  proposing  to  write.  The  author 
is  in  Paris,  about  some  official  business.  He  receives 
a  letter  and  a  telegram  to  say  that  a  little  boy  of  two 


Pierre  Loti  219 

years  old,  the  child  of  a  pair  of  his  domestic  servants 
at  Rochefort,  has  suddenly  died  of  croup.  The  resulting 
emotion  is  so  capricious,  so  intimate,  so  poignant,  that 
one  would  hardly  be  able  to  tell  it,  were  it  one's  own 
experience,  to  one's  most  familiar  friend.  Pierre  Loti 
tells  it  to  the  world  in  full  detail,  without  concealment 
of  names  or  places  or  conditions,  and  with  an  absolute 
perfection  of  narrative.  He  weaves  it  into  a  sort  of 
diatribe  against  "  the  stupid  cruelty  of  death."  He 
flies  back  to  his  home,  he  visits  the  little  newly-made 
grave,  he  mingles  his  tears  with  those  of  the  child's 
father,  he  recalls  a  score  of  pretty  tricks  and  babblings. 
There  seems  to  us  English  people  a  certain  lack  here 
of  decent  proportion  or  self-command.  Yet  these  are 
local  matters,  and  the  standard  of  taste  varies  so  much 
at  different  times  in  different  countries  that  one  hesitates 
to  dogmatise.  And  besides,  the  whole  thing  is  steeped 
in  that  distinguished  melancholy  beauty  which  redeems 
and  explains  everything. 

A  large  section  of  this  new  volume  deals  with  the 
customs  and  landscape  of  that  extreme  corner  of  south- 
western France  which  the  author  has  made  his  own 
during  the  years  in  which  he  has  been  stationed  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Bidassoa.  All  these  studies  of  the ' '  Euskal- 
Erria,"  the  primitive  Basque  Country,  are  instinct  with 
the  most  graceful  qualities  of  Pierre  Loti's  spirit.  He 
has  an  exquisite  instinct  for  the  preservation  of  whatever 
is  antique  and  beautiful,  a  superstitious  conservatism 
pushed  almost  to  an  affectation.  As  he  grows  older, 
this  characteristic  increases  with  him.  He  has  become 
an  impassioned  admirer  of  cathedrals;  he  is  moved, 
almost  to  an  act  of  worship,  by  sumptuous  and  compli- 
cated churches;  he  bows  a  dubiously  adoring  knee  at 
Loyola  and  at  Burgos.     He  is  very  eager  to  take  part 


220  French   Profiles 

in  processions,  he  is  active  among  crowds  of  penitents, 
he  omits  no  item  in  the  sensual  parts  of  ritual,  and  is 
swayed  almost  to  intoxication  on  the  ebb  and  flood  of 
mysterious  and  archaic  incantations.  The  reader  of  his 
Jerusalem  will  recall  how  earnestly  and  how  vainly 
Pierre  Loti  sought  for  a  religious  idea,  or  a  genuine 
inspiration  of  any  spiritual  kind,  among  the  shrines 
and  waters  of  Palestine.  Once  more  this  unction  is 
denied  him.  Doomed  for  ever  to  deal  with  the  external 
side  of  things,  the  exquisite  envelope  of  hfe,  Loti,  as 
time  goes  by,  seems  knocking  with  a  more  and  more 
hopeless  agitation  at  the  door  of  the  mystical  world. 
But  that  which  is  revealed  to  children  %vill  never  be 
exposed  to  him.  It  ought  to  be  enough  for  Loti  that 
he  surpasses  all  the  rest  of  his  fellow-men  in  the  perfection 
of  his  tactile  apparatus.  That  which  is  neither  to  be 
seen,  nor  touched,  nor  smelled,  nor  heard,  hes  outside 
his  province. 

But,  within  his  province,  what  a  magician  he  is  ! 
Vacances  de  Pdques,  apparently  a  cancelled  chapter  from 
Le  Roman  d'un  Enfant,  tells  us  how  a  certain  Easter 
holiday  was  spent  in  Loti's  childhood,  and  how  the 
days  flew  one  after  another,  in  the  same  cold  rain, 
under  the  same  black  sky.  The  subject,  mainly  dealing 
with  a  neglected  imposition  and  the  dilatory  labours  of 
an  idle  schoolboy,  seems  as  unpromising  as  possible, 
but  the  author's  skill  redeems  it,  and  this  httle  essay 
contains  one  page  on  the  excessive  colour  of  bright 
flowers  under  a  grey  or  broken  sky  which  ranks  among 
the  best  that  he  has  written.  Pierre  Loti  is  always 
excellent  on  this  subject ;  one  recollects  the  tiny  blossoms 
that  enamelled  the  floor  of  his  tent  m  Au  Maroc.  In 
the  present  volume,  while  he  is  waiting  on  the  hill-side 
to  join  the  procession  winding  far  up  the  Pyrenees  to 


Pierre  Loti  221 

Roncevaux,  he  notes  the  long  rosy  spindles  of  the 
foxgloves,  lashed  with  rain,  the  laden  campanulas,  the 
astonishing  and  almost  grotesque  saxifrages  torn  and 
ravaged  by  the  hail.  And  here  and  there  a  monotonous 
flush  of  red  flowers — rosy  moss-campions,  rosy  gera- 
niums, rosy  mallows — and  from  the  broken  stalks  the 
petals  flung  in  pink  ribands  across  the  deUcate  deep 
green  mosses. 

An  example  of  the  peculiar  subtlety  of  Loti's  symbol- 
ism is  afforded  by  the  curious  little  study  here  called 
Papillon  de  Mite.  In  that  corner  of  his  house  in  Roche- 
fort  of  which  he  has  often  told  us,  where  all  the  treasures 
are  stored  up  that  he  has  brought  home  from  his  travels, 
the  author  watches  a  clothes-moth  disengage  itself  from 
a  splendid  Chinese  robe  of  red  velvet,  and  dance  in  a 
sunbeam.  Rapidly,  rapidly,  in  the  dehrium  of  exist- 
ence, this  atom  waves  its  wings  of  silken  dust,  describing 
its  little  gay,  fantastic  curves  of  flight.  Loti  strikes  it 
carelessly  to  the  ground,  and  then  begins  to  wonder 
what  it  is  that  it  reminds  him  of.  Where  had  he  once 
seen  before  in  his  life  something  "  papillonnement  gris 
pareil  "  which  had  caused  him  a  Uke  but  a  less  transient 
melancholy  ?  And  he  recollects — it  was  long  ago,  at 
Constantinople,  on  the  wooden  bridge  that  connects 
Stamboul  and  Pera.  A  woman  who  had  lost  both  her 
legs  was  begging,  while  a  little,  grey,  impassive  child, 
with  shrivelled  hands,  lay  at  her  side.  Presently  the 
mother  called  the  child  to  come  and  have  its  small 
garment  put  on,  when  all  at  once  it  leaped  from  her 
hands  and  escaped,  dancing  about  in  the  cold  wind,  and 
flapping  the  sleeves  of  its  burnous-like  wings.  And  it 
was  of  this  poor  child,  soon  exhausted,  soon  grey  and 
immobile  again,  but  for  an  instant  intoxicated  with  the 
simple  ecstasy  of  existence  and  motion,  that  Loti  was 


222  French   Profiles 

reminded  by  the  curves  and  flutterings  of  the  clothes- 
moth.  This  is  a  wonderfully  characteristic  example  of 
the  methods  of  the  author,  of  his  refined  sensibility, 
vivid  memory  for  details,  and  fondness  for  poignant 
and  subtle  impressions  of  association. 

In  Profanation — the  study  which  I  have  dared  to 
speak  of  with  reprobation — I  feel  sure  that  he  carries 
too  far  his  theory  that  we  may  say  anything  if  only 
we  say  it  exquisitely  enough  and  in  the  interests  of  pity. 
Loti's  ideas  of  "  taste,"  of  reticence,  are  not  ours ;  he 
does  not  address  an  Anglo-Saxon  audience.  But  the 
cases  in  which  he  offends  against  even  our  conventions 
are  very  few  in  Figures  et  Choses.  I  have  left  myself  no 
space  to  speak  of  the  vivid  pictures  of  sports  among  the 
primeval  Basque  population — studies,  one  might  con- 
jecture them  to  be,  for  the  book  that  afterwards  became 
Ramuntcho.  I  can  but  refer,  with  strong  commendation, 
to  the  amazing  description  of  the  sacred  dance  of  the 
Souletins.  The  last  one  hundred  pages  of  this  enchant- 
ing volume  are  occupied  by  Trois  Journees  de  Guerre,  an 
exceedingly  minute  and  picturesque  report  of  the  storm- 
ing of  the  city  of  Hue  in  the  Annam  War  of  1883.  Unless 
I  am  mistaken,  these  notes  were  originally  sent  home 
to  some  Parisian  newspaper,  where  their  pubhcation 
gave  great  offence  at  the  French  Admiralty  or  War 
Office.  Why  it  should  do  so,  it  is  not  easy  after  fifteen 
years  of  suppression  to  conceive.  These  Trois  Journees 
de  Guerre  en  Annam  form  one  of  the  most  admirably 
sohd  of  all  Pierre  Loti's  minor  writings.  They  ought  to 
be  read  in  conjunction  with  the  book  called  Propos 
d'Exil. 

1897. 


Pierre  Loti  223 


Ramuntcho 

In  Ramuntcho  Pierre  Loti  returns  to  the  class  of  work 
which  originally  made  him  famous.  It  is  eleven  years 
since  he  published  Pecheur  d'Islande,  the  latest  of  his 
genuine  novels,  for  we  refuse  to  include  among  these 
the  distressing  sketch  called  Matelot.  During  this 
decade  he  has  written  much,  and  some  of  it,  such  as 
Fantdme  d'Orient,  has  taken  a  form  half-way  between 
fact  and  fiction ;  the  rest  has  been  purely  descriptive, 
culminating,  or  rather  going  to  seed,  in  the  rather 
empty  volume  called  La  Galilee.  It  is  probable  that 
Loti — who  for  a  person  who  never  reads  anything  (as 
he  told  the  French  Academy)  is  remarkably  shrewd  in 
feeling  the  pulse  of  literature — has  become  conscious 
that  he  must  recover  some  lost  steps  of  his  position. 
After  a  considerable  pause,  then,  he  comes  forward  with 
a  book  which  is  not  only  one  of  the  most  attractive  that 
he  has  ever  written,  but  belongs  to  the  class  which  the 
public  particularly  enjoys.  In  Ramuntcho  the  tribe  of 
the  Lotists  recover  the  Loti  that  they  like  best,  the  Loti 
of  Pecheur  d'Islande  and  Le  Roman  d'un  Spahi.  Such 
a  book  as  this,  very  carefully  written  in  his  best  style 
by  the  most  sensitive  writter  now  living,  is  an  event, 
and  one  on  which  to  congratulate  ourselves. 

The  scene  of  Ramuntcho  is  the  extreme  south-western 
corner  of  France,  between  the  Bay  of  Biscay  and  the 
Pyrenees,  where  the  remanants  of  an  ancient  race  speak 
their  mysterious  and  unrelated  Basque  language,  and 
live  a  life  apart  from  the  interests  and  habits  of  their 
fellow-countrymen.  We  are  reminded  of  the  Breton 
scenes  in  Mon  Frhre  Yves,  with  their  flashes  of  sunshine 
breaking  through  long  spells  of  rain  and  mist;  and 
Ramuntcho,  the  hero  of  the  book,  is,  indeed,  a  sort  of 


224  French   Profiles 

Yves — less  intelligent,  less  developed,  carried  less  far 
into  manhood,  but  with  the  same  dumb  self-reliance, 
the  same  unadulterated  physical  force,  the  same  pathetic 
resignation  as  the  scion  of  a  wasting,  isolated  race.  The 
landscape  of  the  Basque  country  interpenetrates  the 
whole  fabric  of  the  story ;  we  never  escape  from  it  for  a 
moment.  We  move  among  grey  hamlets,  infinitely  old, 
which  are  perched  among  great  chestnuts,  high  up  upon 
the  terraces  of  mountain  sides.  On  one  hand  the  Bay 
of  Biscay,  with  its  troubled  waters,  never  ceases  to 
moan;  on  the  other,  the  tumultuous  labyrinth  of  the 
Pyrenees,  with  its  sinuous  paths  and  winding  streams, 
stretches  interminably,  obscure  and  threatening.  In  each 
of  the  sparse  mountain  villages  two  monuments  of  great 
antiquity  hold  the  local  life  together ;  one  is  the  massive 
and  archaic  church,  often  as  soHd  as  a  fortress ;  the  other 
is  the  fives-court,  in  which  for  generations  past  all  the 
young  men  of  the  parish  have  tempered  their  muscles  of 
steel,  and  become  adepts  in  this  national  game  of  la  pelote. 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  way  in  which  the 
imagination  of  M.  Loti  works  will  have  no  difficulty  in 
guessing  the  line  he  takes  with  such  a  landscape  as  this. 
Its  inaccessibility  to  modern  innovations,  its  secular 
decay,  the  gravity  and  dignity  of  its  inhabitants,  their 
poverty  and  independence,  their  respect  for  physical 
beauty,  their  hardy  activity — all  these  are  qualities 
naturally  fascinating  to  M.  Loti,  and  he  adds  to  a  com- 
bination of  these  the  pecuhar  melancholy,  the  sense  of 
the  inexorable  "  fallings  from  us,  vanishings,"  of  which 
he  is  so  singular  a  master.  Never  has  he  been  more 
pathetic,  more  deeply  plunged  in  the  consciousness  that, 
as  the  Persian  poet  puts  it, 

"  The  Stars  are  setting,  and  the  Caravan 
Starts  for  the  Dawn  of  Nothing." 


Pierre  Loti  225 

Never  has  he  expended  a  greater  wealth  of  melody  and 
colour,  never  fused  his  effects  into  tones  of  rarer  delicacy, 
than  in  this  tale  of  smuggling,  pelote-plsiying  and  court- 
ship in  a  mountain  village  of  the  Basques. 

No  injustice  is  done  to  the  author  of  such  a  novel  as 
this  by  giving  an  outUne  of  his  plot,  for  the  mere  story 
is  primitive  and  simple ;  it  is  in  the  telling  that  the  art 
consists.  The  hamlet  of  Etchezar  is  the  home  of 
Franchita,  a  lonely  woman,  who,  with  one  little  son, 
Raymond  or  (in  Basque)  Ramuntcho,  stole  back  thither 
some  fifteen  years  before  the  tale  opens,  having  been 
deserted  by  the  man,  an  unnamed  person  of  quahty 
from  Paris,  whose  mistress  she  had  been  in  Biarritz. 
Ramuntcho  grows  up  with  a  mixed  temperament ; 
partly  he  is  a  Basque,  stolid,  impenetrable,  intensely 
local,  but  partly  also  he  is  conscious  of  cosmopolitan 
instincts,  faint  blasts  of  longing,  hke  those  which  come 
to  Arne  in  Bjornson's  beautiful  story,  for  the  world 
outside,  the  au-dela,  or,  as  Ramuntcho  vaguely  puts  it, 
"  les  choses  d'ailleurs."  In  the  village  of  Etchezar, 
which  mainly  supports  itself  by  smuggling,  the  widow 
Dolores  is  a  prominent  personage,  with  her  intensely 
respectable  past,  her  store  of  money,  and  the  two 
beautiful  children,  her  son  Arrochkoa  and  her  daughter 
Gracieuse.  But  she  hates  and  despises  the  unfortunate 
Franchita,  and  scorns  Ramuntcho.  The  latter  youth, 
arriving  at  the  maturity  of  seventeen  years,  and  in  close 
amity  with  Arrochkoa,  is  admitted  into  the  secret 
fellowship  of  a  most  desperate  and  successful  band  of 
smugglers,  who,  under  the  guidance  of  Itchoua,  a  much 
older  man,  harry  the  frontier  of  Spain. 

The  excursions  of  the  smugglers  give  M.  Loti  oppor- 
tunities for  his  matchless  power  in  visual  writing.  The 
great  scene  in  which,  under  the  intoxication  of  the 
9 


^26  French   Profiles 

magical  south  wind,  the  band  of  desperadoes  cross  the 
shining  estuary  of  the  Bidassoa  at  sunrise,  is  superb. 
But  still  more  striking  are  the  pictures  of  home  life  in 
the  village,  the  ceremonies  and  entertainments  on  All 
Saints'  Day,  scenes  the  theatres  of  which  are  the  church 
and  the  pelote-convt.  In  the  national  game — the  Basque 
fives  in  excelsis — Ramuntcho  becomes,  as  he  approaches 
the  age  of  eighteen,  extremely  skilful ;  he  and  Arrochkoa, 
indeed,  are  the  two  champion  players  of  the  whole  dis- 
trict, and  are  thus  drawn  into  closer  mutual  friendship. 
And  under  the  smile  with  which  Gracieuse  rewards  his 
prowess  at  the  game,  an  old  affection  for  the  sister  of 
his  friend  is  blown  into  a  passion,  which  is  returned, 
and  would  be  avowed,  but  for  the  jealousy  of  old 
Dolores.  The  lovers  are  driven  to  innocent  clandestine 
meetings  on  the  stone  bench  under  Dolores'  house,  or, 
upon  moonlight  nights,  within  the  dense  shadow  of  the 
chestnut  trees.  If  there  is  any  theme  in  which  M.  Loti 
delights,  and  to  the  delineation  of  which  he  brings  his 
most  delicate  and  sympathetic  gifts,  it  is  the  progress  of 
the  passion  of  love  in  adolescence.  Ramuntcho  comes 
to  Gracieuse  from  his  perilous  skirmishings  with  the 
Spanish  Custom-house  officers,  and  from  long  vigils 
which  have  brought  him  close  to  the  very  pulse  of 
nature.  I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting,  in  this  connex- 
ion, one  passage  intimately  characteristic  of  its  author : — 
"  Voici  venir  les  longs  crepuscules  pales  de  juin.  .  .  , 
Pour  Ramuntcho,  c'est  I'epoque  ou  la  contrebande 
devient  un  metier  presque  sans  peine,  avec  des  heures 
charmantes  :  marcher  vers  les  sommets,  a  travers  les 
nuages  printaniers;  franchir  les  ravins,  errer  dans  des 
regions  de  sources  et  de  figuiers  sauvages ;  dormir,  pour 
attendre  I'heure  convenue  avec  les  carabiniers  complices, 
sur  des  tapis  de  menthes  et  d'ceillets.     La  bonne  senteur 


Pierre  Loti  227 


des  plantes  impregnait  ses  habits,  sa  veste  jamais  mise 
qui  ne  lui  servait  que  d'oreiller  ou  de  couverture;  et 
Gracieuse  quelquefois  lui  disait  le  soir  :  '  Je  sais  la  con- 
trebande  que  vous  avez  faite  la  nuit  demiere,  car  tu 
sens  les  menthes  de  la  montagne  au-dessus  de  Mendiazpi,' 
ou  bien  : '  Tu  sens  les  absinthes  du  marais  de  Subernoa.'  " 
This  happy  condition  of  things  is  brought  to  an  end 
by  the  necessity  on  which  Ramuntcho  finds  himself  of 
opting  for  Spanish  or  French  citizenship.  If  he  chooses 
the  latter,  he  must  prepare  for  three  years'  absence  on 
military  duty  before  he  can  marry  Gracieuse.  He  deter- 
mines, however,  that  to  accept  his  fate  is  the  manly 
thing  to  do;  but  hardly  has  he  so  decided,  when  an 
unexpected  letter  comes  from  an  uncle  Ignacio,  in 
Uruguay,  offering  to  adopt  him  if  he  will  go  out  to 
America.  The  proposal  comes  too  late,  and  he  starts 
for  his  military  service.  Then  the  tragedy  begins.  He 
returns  after  his  three  years'  absence  to  find  his  mother 
dying,  and  his  Gracieuse  vanished.  The  bitter  old 
Dolores,  after  vainly  thrusting  a  rich  suitor  upon  her 
daughter,  has  driven  her  to  take  the  veil,  and  she  is  now 
a  nun  in  a  little  remote  mountain-convent  close  to  the 
Spanish  frontier.  Ramuntcho  takes  up  the  old  wild  life 
as  a  smuggler,  but  he  cannot  get  the  idea  of  Gracieuse 
out  of  his  mind;  and  at  last,  encouraged  by  Arrochkoa, 
he  determines  to  make  a  raid  on  the  convent,  snatch 
Gracieuse  from  her  devotions,  and  fly  with  her  to  Argen- 
tina. The  two  young  men  make  an  elaborate  plan  for  a 
nocturnal  rape  of  their  Iberian  Sabine.  But  when  they 
arrive  at  the  peaceful,  noiseless  nunnery,  and  are 
hospitably  received  by  the  holy  women,  their  ardour 
dies  away.  Gracieuse  gives  no  sign  of  any  wish  to  fly ; 
she  merely  says,  when  she  hears  that  Ramuntcho  is 
leaving  the  country,  that  they  will  all  pray  the  Virgin 


228  French   Profiles 

that  he  may  have  a  happy  voyage.  Intimidated  by  the 
sanctity  of  the  Hfe  which  it  seemed  so  easy  to  break 
into  as  they  talked  about  it  late  at  nights  over  their 
chacoli,  but  which  now  seems  impregnable,  the  lads  go 
peaceably  away,  Arrochkoa  sullenly  to  his  nocturnal 
foray  on  the  frontier,  Ramuntcho  with  a  broken  heart 
to  Bordeaux  and  Buenos  Ayres,  And  so,  with  that 
tribute  to  the  mutability  of  fortune  which  Loti  loves, 
and  with  a  touch  of  positive  pietism  which  we  meet 
with  in  his  work  almost  for  the  first  time — there  was  a 
hint  of  it  in  Jerusalem — this  beautiful  and  melancholy 
book  closes.  We  feel  as  we  put  down  the  volume  more 
convinced  than  ever  of  the  unique  character  of  its 
author's  talent,  so  evasive  and  Umited,  and  yet  within 
its  own  boundaries  of  so  exquisite  a  perfection.  It  is  a 
talent  in  which  intellect  has  little  part,  but  in  which 
melody  and  perfume  and  colour  combine  with  extra- 
ordinary vivacity  to  produce  an  impression  of  extreme 
and  perhaps  not  quite  healthy  sensibility. 


Les  Derniers  Jours  de  P6kin 

It  was  a  fortunate  chance  which  sent  to  China,  in  the 
late  autumn  of  1900,  the  man  in  whom,  perhaps  more 
delicately  than  in  any  other  living  person,  are  com- 
bined the  gifts  of  the  seeing  eye  and  the  expressive  pen. 
The  result  is  a  book  which,  so  far  as  mere  visual  present- 
ment goes,  may  safely  be  said  to  outweigh  the  whole 
bulk  of  what  else  was  sent  home  from  the  extreme  East, 
in  letters  and  articles  to  every  part  of  the  world,  during 
that  terrible  period  of  storm  and  stress.  Pierre  Loti 
arrived  when  the  fighting  was  over,  when  the  Imperial 
family  had  fled,  and  when  the  mysteries  of  the  hitherto 


Pierre  Loti  229 

inviolable  capital  of  China  had  just  first  been  opened  to 
the  Powers.  He  reaped  the  earUest  harvest  of  strange 
and  magnificent  impressions,  and  he  saw,  with  that 
incomparably  clear  vision  of  his,  what  no  European  had 
seen  till  then,  and  much  that  no  human  being  will  ever 
see  again.  Moreover,  the  great  artist,  who  had  seemed 
in  Jerusalem,  and  still  more  in  La  Galilee,  to  have 
tired  his  pen  a  little,  and  to  have  lost  something  of  his 
firm  clairvoyance,  has  enjoyed  a  rest  of  several  years. 
His  style  proclaims  the  advantage  of  this  reserve  of 
vigour.  Loti  is  entirely  himself  again ;  never  before, 
not  even  in  the  matchless  Fleurs  d'Exil,  has  he  pre- 
sented his  talent  in  a  form  more  evenly  brilliant,  more 
splendidly  characteristic  in  its  rich  simphcity,  than 
in  Les  Dernier s  Jours  de  Pekin. 

Pierre  Loti  arrived  at  Ning-Hai,  on  the  Yellow  Sea, 
in  a  French  man-of-war,  on  October  3,  and  a  week  later 
he  started  on  a  mission  to  Peking.  His  journey  thither 
was  marked  by  no  very  striking  events,  except  by  his 
passage  through  the  vast  and  deserted  city  of  Tong- 
Tcheou,  full  of  silence  and  corpses,  and  paved,  with 
broken  porcelain.  The  horrors  of  this  place  might  fill 
a  niche  in  some  eastern  Inferno ;  and  they  ofier  Loti  his 
first  opportunity  to  exercise  in  China  his  marvellous 
gift  for  the  reproduction  of  phenomena.  We  pass  with 
him  under  the  black  and  gigantic  ramparts  of  Tong- 
Tcheou,  and  thread  its  dreadful  streets  under  the  harsh 
and  penetrating  light  of  Chinese  autumn.  The  cold- 
ness, the  dark  colour,  the  awful  silence,  the  importunate 
and  crushing  odour  of  death,  these  he  renders  as  only 
a  master  can.  The  little  party  pursues  its  course,  and 
on  October  18,  quite  suddenly,  in  a  grim  solitude,  where 
nothing  had  been  visible  a  few  seconds  before,  a  huge 
crenelated  rampart  hangs  high  above  their  heads,  the 


230  French   Profiles 

disconcerting  and  grimacing  outer  wall  of  the  Tartar 
city  of  Peking. 

We  cannot  follow  the  author  through  his  intellectual 
adventures,  on  a  scene  the  most  mysterious  and  the 
most  tragic  in  the  modem  world,  where,  it  is  true,  the 
agony  of  movement  had  ceased,  but  where,  in  the  sus- 
pense and  hush,  the  mental  excitement  was  perhaps 
even  greater  than  it  had  been  during  the  siege.  Every- 
where was  brooding  the  evidence  of  massacre,  every- 
where the  horror  of  catastrophe,  in  what  had  so  lately 
been  the  most  magnificent  city  in  the  world,  and  what 
was  now  merely  the  most  decrepit.  The  author,  by 
virtue  of  his  errand  and  his  fame,  had  the  extreme  good 
fortune  to  be  passed  from  the  ruined  French  Embassy, 
in  and  in,  through  the  Yellow  City  and  the  Pink  City, 
to  the  very  Holy  of  Holies,  the  ultimate  and  mysterious 
shrine,  never  before  exhibited  or  even  described  to  a 
Western  eye,  where,  above  the  fabulous  Lake  of  Lotus, 
the  Empress  and  the  Emperor  had  their  group  of  secluded 
palaces.  He  was  lodged  in  a  gallery,  walled  entirely 
with  glass  and  rice-paper,  where  marvellous  ebony 
sculptures  dropped  in  lacework  from  the  ceiling,  and 
where  Imperial  golden-yellow  carpets,  incredibly  soft 
and  sumptuous,  rolled  their  dragons  along  the  floor. 
Here  the  Empress,  until  a  month  or  two  before,  had 
played  the  goddess  among  her  great  ladies  in  an  indolent 
magnificence  of  flowers  and  satins  and  music. 

But,  perhaps,  more  incalculable  still  was  the  little 
dark  chamber,  furnished  with  a  deep  austerity  of  taste, 
and  faintly  pervaded  with  an  odour  of  tea,  of  withered 
roses  and  of  old  silks,  where,  on  a  low  bed,  the  dark  blue 
coverlid  thrown  hastily  aside,  no  change  had  been  made 
since  the  pale  and  timid  Emperor,  whose  innermost  lair 
this  was,  had  risen,  in  a  paroxysm  of  terror,  to  fly  for  his 


Pierre   Loti  231 

life  into  the  darkness,  into  the  unknown  spaces,  guided 
only  by  that  fierce  and  wonderful  woman,  of  whose 
personal  greatness  everything  that  reaches  us  through 
the  dimness  of  report  merely  seems  to  intensify  our 
perception. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  do  more  than  indicate  the 
fullness  of  the  descriptive  passages  which  throng  this 
volume.  All  the  scenes,  by  day  and  night,  in  the  Pink 
City,  with  its  ramparts  the  colour  of  dried  blood;  all 
the  pictures  of  temples  and  pagodas,  half-lost  in  groves 
of  immemorial  cedars,  and  stained,  in  their  exquisite 
and  precious  beauty,  by  dust,  and  corruption,  and 
neglect;  all  the  visits  to  sinister  mandarins;  all  the 
chiaroscuro  of  night,  scented  and  twinkling,  falhng  upon 
this  foul  and  fairylike  nightmare — all  must  be  read  in 
the  author's  own  language.  How  concise  that  is,  how 
unaffected,  how  competent  to  transfer  to  us  the  image 
strongly  imprinted  upon  Loti's  own  delicately  ductile 
vision,  one  extract  must  suffice  to  exemplify.  It  is  the 
conclusion  of  the  account  he  gives  of  his  visit  to  the 
triple  Temple  of  the  Lamas,  where  all  had  been  in 
contrast,  in  its  colour  of  ochre  and  rust,  with  the  rose- 
colour  and  golden  yellow  of  purely  Chinese  state 
ornament : — 

"  Ce  dernier  temple — le  plus  caduc  peut-etre,  le  plus 
dejete,  et  le  plus  vermoulu — ne  presente  que  la  repetition 
obsedante  des  deux  autres — sauf  pourtant  I'idole  du 
centre  qui,  au  lieu  d'etre  assise  et  de  taille  humaine, 
surgit  debout,  geante,  imprevue  et  presque  effroyable. 
Les  plafonds  d'or,  coupes  pour  la  laisser  passer,  lui 
arrivent  a  mi-jambe,  et  elle  montetoute  droitesous  une 
esp^ce  de  clocher  dore^  qui  la  tient  par  trop  etroitement 
emboitee.  Pour  voir  son  visage,  il  faut  s'approcher 
tout  contre  les  autels,  et  lever  la  t^te  au  milieu  des  briile- 


232  French  Profiles 

parfums  et  des  rigides  fleurs ;  on  dirait  alors  une  momie 
de  Titan  erigee  dans  sa  gaine,  et  son  regard  baisse,  an 
premier  abord,  cause  quelque  crainte.  Mais,  en  la 
fixant,  on  subit  d'elle  un  malefice  plutot  charmeur;  on 
se  sent  hypnotise  et  retenu  Ik  par  son  sourire,  qui  tombe 
d'en  haut  si  detache  et  si  tranquille,  sur  tout  son  en- 
tourage de  splendeur  expirante,  d'or,  et  de  poussi^re,  de 
froid,  de  crepuscule,  de  mines,  et  de  silence." 

Pierre  Loti's  brief  visit  was  paid  just  when  the  tide 
was  turning.  Even  while  he  stayed  in  his  fairy  palace 
he  noted  the  rapid  recovery  of  Peking.  The  corpses 
were  being  buried  out  of  sight,  the  ruins  repaired,  the 
raw  edges  of  useless  and  barbarous  destruction  healed 
over.  And  now,  after  so  short  an  absence,  the  mysterious 
Empress  and  her  flock  of  mandarins  are  back  once  more, 
to  restore  as  best  they  may  their  sparkUng  terraces  of 
alabaster  and  their  walls  of  sanguine  lac.  Once  more 
the  secrets  of  the  Pink  City  will  fold  their  soft  curtains 
around  them,  and  that  inscrutable  existence  of  cere- 
monious luxury  resume  its  ancient  course.  Will  any 
living  Western  man  see  again  what  Loti  and  his  comrades 
saw  in  the  winter  of  1900  ?  In  one  sense  it  is  impossible 
that  he  should,  since  the  adorable  palace  of  the  Empress, 
occupied  by  Field-Marshal  von  Waldersee,  was  burned 
down  by  accident  in  April  1901.  But  even  what  survives 
is  only  too  hkely  to  be  hidden  again  for  ever  from  Euro- 
pean eyes,  unless,  indeed,  another  massacre  of  Christians 
throws  it  open  to  our  righteous  Vandalism. 

1902. 


SOME    RECENT    BOOKS   OF 
M.    PAUL    BOURGET 


SOME  RECENT    BOOKS    OF 
M.    PAUL    BOURGET 

VOYAGEUSES 

The  talent  of  M.  Paul  Bourget  has  but  rarely  consented 
to  submit  itself  to  that  precision  of  form  and  rapidity 
of  narrative  which  are  necessary  for  the  conduct  of  a 
short  story.  His  novels,  indeed,  have  been  becoming 
longer  and  longer,  and  the  latest,  Un  Crime  d' Amour, 
had,  we  are  bound  to  confess,  such  an  abundance  of 
reflections  and  so  httle  plot  that  it  seemed  to  take  us 
back  to  the  days  of  Marivaux  and  Richardson.  It  was, 
therefore,  a  pleasant  surprise  to  open  M.  Bourget's  new 
volume,  and  discover  that  it  is  a  collection  of  six  inde- 
pendent stories,  not  one  of  them  lengthy.  The  title, 
Voyagetises,  is  explained  by  a  brief  preface.  These  are 
tales  of  female  travellers,  whom  the  author  has  met 
(or  feigns  to  have  met)  in  the  course  of  those  restless 
perambulations  of  the  world  which  he  describes  to  us, 
every  now  and  then,  in  his  graceful  "  sensations." 
M.  Bourget  appears  to  us  in  Voyageuses  in  his  very 
happiest  vein,  with  least  of  his  mannerism  and  most 
of  his  lucid  gift  of  penetrating  through  action  to  motive. 
The  first  of  these  stories  is  also  the  most  subtle  and 
pleasing.  "  Antigone  "  is  the  name  the  author  gives 
to  a  Frenchwoman  whom  he  meets  in  Corfu.  She  is 
the  sister  of  a  deputy  who  has  been  attainted  in  the 
Panama  scandal,  and  who  still  tries  to  be  dignified  in 
exile.    This  ignoble  person  affects  complete  innocence, 

235 


236  French   Profiles 

and  has  deceived  a  noble  Ionian  burgher,  Napol6on 
Zaffoni,  into  a  belief  in  him,  so  that  Zaffoni  entrusts  to 
him  the  MS.  of  a  book,  the  work  of  his  lifetime,  on  the 
history  and  constitution  of  the  Ionian  Islands.  From 
this  the  deputy  grossly  plagiarises,  and  would  be  cast 
forth  even  from  Corfu  were  he  not  protected  by  the 
fervent  good  faith  of  his  sister,  who,  in  spite  of  all  his 
rogueries,  persists  in  believing  in  him.  His  character 
is  presently  whitewashed  in  Paris,  and  he  returns  to  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  triumphant,  owing  all  to  the  long- 
suffering  old  maid  whom  he  probably  robs  and  upon 
whom  he  certainly  tramples. 

We  pass  over  to  America  in  the  somewhat  fantastic 
tale  called  "  Deux  Menages."  The  author  has  been 
told  in  Paris  that  he  must  make  the  acquaintance  of 
Mrs.  Tennyson  R.  Harris,  who  is  "  such  "  a  bright, 
cultured  woman  with  a  "  lovely  "  home  at  Newport. 
Unfortunately  there  is  a  husband,  a  common  millionaire, 
without  any  conversation ;  but  one  need  take  no  notice 
of  him.  M.  Bourget  visits  Mrs.  Tennyson  R.  Harris, 
but  finds  her  pretentious,  scandalous  and  empty,  and 
her  lovely  home  a  crazy  shop  of  knick-knacks.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  becomes  deeply  interested  in  the 
husband,  a  silent,  down-trodden  man,  horribly  over- 
worked and  beginning  to  suffer  from  "  nerve-trouble." 
He  is  ordered  south  for  rest,  and  invites  the  author  to 
come  with  him.  At  Thomasville,  a  fashionable  watering- 
place  in  Georgia,  they  have  a  curious  experience,  which 
M.  Bourget  must  be  left  to  tell  in  his  own  words. 

We  are  next  in  Ireland,  in  the  exquisite  story  called 
"  Neptunevale."  Two  young  Parisians  of  fashion,  the 
one  as  empty-headed  as  the  other,  but,  beneath  their 
frivolity,  deeply  and  mutually  enamoured,  receive  soon 
after  their  marriage  a  singular  legacy.     It  is  nothing 


M.   Paul  Bourget  237 

less  than  a  small  property  on  the  west  coast  of  Ireland, 
where  an  uncle  of  the  hero's,  having  persisted  against 
the  wish  of  his  family  in  marrying  a  governess,  retired 
half  a  century  ago  in  dogged  determination  of  exile. 
The  young  people  do  not  know  what  to  do  with  this 
little  white  Irish  elephant,  except  to  sell  it  for  as  much 
cash  as  it  would  fetch.  But  they  have  a  curiosity  to 
see  it  first,  and,  utterly  ignorant,  they  persuade  M. 
Bourget,  who  "  knows  the  language,"  to  come  over 
with  them.  Neptunevale — for  that  is  the  name  of  their 
uncle's  home — lies  on  the  coast  of  county  Gal  way ;  they 
have  to  get  out  at  Oranmore  station  and  drive  to  it. 
The  arrival  at  the  strange  house,  the  reception  of  the 
French  visitors  by  the  old  Irish  servants,  the  way  that 
the  Celtic  sentiment  invades  and  engulfs  the  new- 
comers, so  that  at  last  they  are  afraid  to  sell  the  place 
at  all,  but  find  it  exercising  a  curious  fascination  over 
them,  an  attraction  half  of  terror  and  half  of  love — all 
this  is  described  with  extreme  skill  and  delicacy.  Nor 
can  we  fail  to  remark,  with  some  degree  of  surprise  as 
well  as  of  admiration,  how  exactly  M.  Bourget,  who 
can  have  but  a  slight  and  superficial  knowledge  of 
Ireland,  has  caught  the  note  of  Irish  mysticism.  There 
is  a  scene  in  which  an  old  mad  woman  and  a  little  boy 
sacrifice  a  cock,  with  horrid  rites,  to  some  dim  Celtic 
deity,  which  is  calculated  to  give  Mr.  Yeats  himself  a 
shiver. 

Much  more  conventional  is  "  Charite  de  Femme," 
a  story  which  I  should  be  inclined  to  describe  as  in- 
significant, were  it  not  that  it  contains  an  incident,  very 
naturally  and  unexpectedly  introduced,  which  illuminates 
it,  as  with  a  flash  of  lightning.  The  scene  of  this  tale, 
moreover,  is  laid  in  the  islands  off  the  coast  of  Provence, 
a  territory  which  seemed  to  belong  till  lately  to  Guy  de 


238  French   Profiles 

Maupassant,  and  has  since  been  annexed  by  M,  Melchior 
de  Vogiie.  There  is  a  vague  sense  in  which  we  conceive 
that  certain  districts  are  the  property  of  particular 
novehsts,  and  resent  the  intrusion  of  others,  unless  the 
newcomers  bring  with  them  some  very  marked  freshness 
of  the  point  of  view.  This  is  wanting  in  "  Charite  de 
Femme."  More  striking  is  "  Odile,"  which  is  composed, 
in  point  of  fact,  of  two  distinct  episodes.  In  a  Parisian 
drawing-room  the  author  meets  a  strange  Marquise 
d'Estinac,  very  distinguished,  shy  and  mysterious,  who 
invites  him  to  take  a  drive  with  her  in  her  carriage,  for 
the  purpose,  as  he  afterwards  divines,  of  enabling  her 
to  conquer  an  otherwise  irresistible  tendency  to  suicide. 
He  learns  that  she  is  extremely  fond  of  her  husband,  who 
neglects  her  for  a  belle  mondaine,  Madame  Justel.  While 
the  author  is  still  bewildered  at  a  circumstance  which  is 
unparalleled  in  his  career — for  the  companion  of  his 
drive  refused  to  speak  to  him  or  look  at  him — he  abruptly 
hears  of  the  sudden  and  mysterious  death  of  Madame 
d'Estinac.  A  couple  of  years  afterwards,  being  at 
Maloja,  he  meets  in  the  hotel  there  the  Marquis,  who 
has  in  the  meantime  married  Madame  Justel.  A  third 
person  is  of  the  party,  Mademoiselle  Odile  d'Estinac,  a 
girl  of  fourteen,  the  exact  counterpart  of  her  unfortunate 
mother.  M.  Bourget  soon  perceives  that  between  this 
proud,  reserved  child  and  her  new  stepmother  the  re- 
lations are  more  than  strained.  He  is  witness  to  the 
insulting  tyranny  of  the  one,  the  isolation  and  despair 
of  the  other;  and  the  body  of  Odile  is  presently  dis- 
covered in  the  tarn  below  the  hotel. 

The  longest  and  the  most  elaborated  of  these  stories 
is  the  last,  and  it  does  not  properly  belong  to  them,  for 
"  La  Pia  "  is  no  voyageuse,  but  a  dweller,  against  her 
will,  in  the  tents  of  Shem.     This  beautiful  and  extra- 


M.   Paul  Bourget  239 

ordinary  tale  of  a  masterpiece  stolen  from  the  remote 
basilica  of  San  Spirit©  in  Val  d'Elsa  is  one  of  the  most 
effective  examples  we  have  met  with  of  M.  Bourget' s 
method.  It  would  be  unfair  to  describe  it  fully,  for  while 
the  five  previous  stories,  of  which  we  have  given  the 
brief  outlines,  depend  exclusively  for  their  effect  on  their 
execution,  here  the  surprises  of  the  plot  have  their 
adventitious  value.  The  EngUsh  readers  of  this  volume 
will  be  inclined  to  see  in  it  a  curious  tribute  to  an  artist 
of  our  own  race.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  beUeve  that 
M.  Bourget,  who  has  always  shown  himself  sensitive,  as 
perhaps  no  other  French  writer  of  equal  value,  to  exotic 
influences,  has  been  an  inattentive  reader  of  Mr.  Henry 
James's  latest  volumes,  and,  in  particular,  of  Embarrass- 
ments and  Terminations.  He  remains,  of  course, 
essentially  himself ;  but,  as  Guy  de  Maupassant  in  Notre 
Cceur  was  evidently  trying  his  hand  at  an  essay  in  the 
Bourget  manner,  so  in  "  Antigone  "  and  "  La  Pia  "  M. 
Bourget  is  discovered,  so  it  seems  at  least  to  us,  no  less 
indubitably  trying  what  he  can  produce  with  the  pencils 
and  two-inch  square  of  ivory  that  are  the  property  of 
Mr,  Henry  James. 

1897. 

La  Duchesse  Bleue 

The  violence  of  public  movements  in  France  in  1897 
was  so  great  as  to  produce  an  unusual  scarcity  in  hterary 
productions.  In  such  a  barren  season,  therefore,  the 
fecundity  of  M.  Paul  Bourget  is  remarkable.  La  Duchesse 
Bleue  is  the  third  volume  which  he  has  published  this 
year,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  solid  and  elaborate  of  his 
novels.  But  it  is  not  quite  new,  although  it  is  now  given 
to  the  pubhc  for  the  first  time  in  book  form.  Five  years 
ago,  if  I  remember  right,  the  "  Journal "  applied  to 


240  French  Profiles 

M.  Bourget  in  great  haste  for  a  new  novel,  and  he  wrote, 
somewhat  in  a  hurry  and  for  that  special  purpose,  a  storj' 
called  Trois  Ames  d' Artistes.  He  was  dissatisfied  with 
it,  and  left  it  there  in  the  lost  columns  of  a  daily  news- 
paper, from  which  he  has  now  redeemed  it,  taking  the 
opportunity  to  revise,  adapt  and  indeed  rewrite  it  as 
La  Duchesse  Bleue.  We  are  not  sure  that  this  is  ever 
a  very  fortunate  method  of  producing  a  book,  and, 
although  the  novel  before  us  bears  trace  of  extraordinary 
care  and  fastidious  correction,  it  lacks  that  spontaneity 
which  comes  with  work  which  has  been  run  on  right  lines 
from  its  very  inception.  La  Duchesse  Bleue,  let  me 
admit  at  once,  is  not  M.  Bourget's  masterpiece. 

But  it  possesses  a  dedication,  which  is  something  of 
a  Hterary  event.  The  dedications  of  M.  Bourget  have 
always  been  a  curious  feature  of  his  work.  They  are 
often,  as  in  the  present  case,  essays  of  some  length  and 
seriousness;  they  frequently  develop  a  theory  or  a 
philosophy  of  the  ingenious  writer's.  On  principle,  we 
are  adverse  to  such  prefatory  disquisitions.  If  an 
author,  long  after  the  date  of  original  publication,  likes 
to  gossip  to  us  about  the  mode  in  which  the  plot  and 
place  commended  themselves  to  him,  we  are  well  pleased 
to  listen.  But  to  open  a  new  novel,  and  to  find  that  a 
critical  or  metaphysical  essay  divides  us  from  the  tale, 
is  not,  to  our  mind,  a  happy  discovery.  It  tends  to 
destroy  the  illusion;  it  is,  in  its  distinguished  way,  of 
the  same  order  of  obstacle  as  "  this  is  a  fact  "  of  the  very 
clumsy  narrator.  We  begin  by  passing  under  a  cold 
shower  of  scepticism ;  the  effort  to  believe  in  the  story 
is  vastly  increased.  The  dedicatory  prefaces  of  M. 
Bourget  are  peculiarly  disillusioning.  He  talks  in  them 
so  much  about  the  craftsman  and  the  artist,  so  much 
about  methods  and  forms ;  in  short,  he  takes  the  music- 


M.  Paul  Bourget  241 

box  to  pieces  before  us  so  resolutely,  that  we  start  with 
a  sense  of  artificiality.  Even  in  these  complex  days,  we 
like  to  pretend  that  we  are  sitting  in  a  ring  around  the 
story-teller,  under  the  hawthorn-tree,  and  that  when 
he  says,  "  There  Was,  once  upon  a  time,"  once  upon  a 
time  there  was. 

In  the  case  before  us  we  are,  as  usual,  of  opinion  that 
the  "  dedication  "  is  no  help  to  the  reader  in  giving  him 
faith  in  the  incidents  about  to  be  related  to  him,  but  it 
forms  in  itself  an  agreeable  and  suggestive  piece  of 
literature.  It  is  addressed  to  Madame  Matilde  Serao, 
the  Neapolitan  novelist,  whose  astonishing  //  paese  di 
Cuccagna,  by  the  way,  has  been  excellently  translated 
out  of  the  Italian  by  Madame  Paul  Bourget.  M. 
Bourget  has  been  reading  this  brilliant  book,  and  he 
has  felt,  once  more,  what  a  chasm  divides  the  crowded 
and  animated  scenes  of  Madame  Serao  from  his  own 
limited  studies  of  psychological  problems.  Accordingly 
he  writes  a  long  letter  to  explain  this  to  Madame  Serao, 
and  to  remind  her  that  in  the  house  of  the  novel  there 
are  many  chambers.  The  great  central  hall,  no  doubt, 
is  that  occupied  by  herself  and  Balzac,  Zola  and  Tolstoi 
— and,  we  may  add,  by  Fielding  and  Dickens — where 
an  eager  creative  energy  sets  on  their  feet,  and  spurs 
to  concerted  action  personages  of  every  kind,  in  hundreds 
at  a  time.  This  prodigious  power  to  crowd  the  canvas 
with  figures  belongs  to  Madame  Serao  alone  among 
the  living  novelists  of  Italy.  One  has  only  to  recollect 
how  entirely  it  is  wanting  to  Gabriele  d'Annunzio.  It 
is  a  gift  not  to  be  despised ;  it  suggests  a  virility  of  intel- 
lect and  a  breadth  of  sympathy  which  are  rewarded  by  a 
direct  influence  over  a  wide  circle  of  readers.  The 
success  of  such  novels,  in  the  hands  of  a  great  artist,  is 
not  problematical,  because  they  possess,  obviously  and 


242  French   Profiles 

beyond  contradiction,  what  M.  Bourget  calls  "  le  colons 
de  la  vie  en  mouvement." 

If,  however,  this  kind  of  scene-painting  were  the  only 
species  of  fiction  permitted,  there  are  many  novelists  who 
could  never  earn  their  daily  bread,  and  M.  Bourget  is 
one  of  them.  Accordingly  his  flattering  address  to 
Madame  Serao  is  merely  the  prelude  to  an  ingenious 
apology  for  the  painting  of  sentiments  and  emotions  in 
the  novel  which  analyses  minute  and  fugitive  impres- 
sions. This  demands  a  closeness  of  texture  and  a 
strenuous  uniformity  of  technical  effort  which  are  in 
themselves  advantages,  but  which  are  with  difficulty 
exercised  in  the  huge  world-romance.  In  the  course 
of  his  essay  M.  Bourget  pauses  to  express  his  warm 
admiration  of  Mr.  Henry  James,  whom  he  takes  as  the 
first  living  exponent  of  this  peculiarly  intense  and  vivid 
manner  of  contemplating,  as  through  a  microscope,  the 
movement  of  intellectual  life.  We  cannot  but  record 
this  fact  with  complaisance,  since,  in  reviewing  Voya- 
geuses  last  year,  we  remarked  that,  if  it  were  possible  to 
imagine  that  a  prominent  French  writer  could  undergo 
the  influence  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  contemporary,  the 
transition  which  the  style  and  attitude  of  M.  Bourget 
are  now  undergoing  would  point  to  a  dehberate  study  of 
Mr.  James's  manner.  M.  Bourget,  in  the  dedication  to 
La  Duchesse  Bleue,  practically  confesses  that  we  were 
correct  in  what  seemed  our  almost  daring  conjecture. 
He  names  Mr.  James's  volume  called  Terminations  as 
the  model  which  he  has  placed  before  himself  in  his 
recent  treatment  of  problems  of  artistic  psychology. 

The  original  name  of  the  story  before  us  was  Trois 
Ames  d' Artistes,  as  we  have  already  said.  M.  Bourget 
explains  that,  on  reflection,  he  thought  this  too  am- 
bitious a  title.     It  was    at  least  descriptive,  whereas 


M.  Paul  Bourget  243 

La  Duchesse  Bleue  suggests  nothing;  it  proves  upon 
examination  to  be  the  nickname  of  a  part  in  a  play  in 
which  the  heroine  made  a  success.  M.  Bourget  has 
portrayed  in  this  book  three  artistic  temperaments  set 
side  by  side.  These  are  respectively  those  of  a  novelist 
and  dramatist,  an  actress  and  a  painter,  and  he  has 
shown  these  three  persons  to  us  in  a  mutual  crisis  of 
tragical  passion.  Jacques  Moran,  the  dramatist,  has  a 
play  being  acted,  for  the  principal  role  in  which  a  charm- 
ing little  actress,  with  a  Botticelli  face,  Camille  Favier, 
makes  a  great  success ;  the  painter  is  Vincent  la  Croix, 
who  tells  the  story.  Moran  is  adored  by  Camille,  but 
deserts  her  for  a  woman  of  fashion,  Madame  de  Bonnivet, 
while  Vincent,  worked  upon  by  his  generous  indignation 
at  this  treatment,  fails  to  perceive  through  three  hundred 
pages  that  he  himself  loves  Camille,  and  might  be  loved 
in  return.  The  plot  is  no  more  complicated  than  this, 
and  we  confess  that  it  requires  some  respect  for  M. 
Bourget  and  some  enthusiasm  for  the  processes  of  the 
psychological  novel  to  carry  us  through  so  long  a  book 
attached  to  so  slender  a  thread  of  plot. 

Moran  and  Camille  are  entirely  successful  in  life, 
Vincent  la  Croix  is  a  failure  in  everything  he  touches, 
and  the  object  of  La  Duchesse  Bleue  seems  to  be  to 
distinguish  between  the  one  race  of  artists  which  trans- 
lates marvellously  without  itself  experiencing,  and  the 
other  race  which  experiences  without  being  able  to 
translate.  For  a  phrase  to  say  on  the  boards,  for  a 
sentence  to  write  in  a  book,  the  former  class  would  sell 
their  father  or  their  mother. 

The  moral  of  La  Duchesse  Bleue,  in  a  nutshell,  is  that 
if  we  wish  to  keep  our  hearts  tender  and  fresh,  we  must 
be  content  to  be  ourselves  mediocre  and  obscure.  The 
thesis  is  a  not  unfamiUar  one.     It  occurred  to  the  fiery 


244  French   Profiles 

spirit  of  Elizabeth  Browning  while  she  watched  the 
great  god  Pan,  down  by  the  reeds  in  the  river,  "  draw 
out  the  pith  like  the  heart  of  a  man."  In  the  hypo- 
thesis of  the  French  novelist,  a  love,  a  hatred,  a  joy, 
a  sorrow,  is  to  the  really  successful  artist  nothing  more 
than  so  much  manured  earth  out  of  which  he  can  force 
the  flower  of  his  talent,  that  blossom  of  delicacy  and 
passion,  to  perfect  which  he  will  not  hesitate  for  a 
moment  to  kill  in  himself  every  true  delicacy  and  every 
living  emotion.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  theory,  and  the 
ugliness  of  it  may  help  us  who  form  the  vast  majority 
of  men  and  women  to  bear  with  fortitude  the  mortifying 
fact  that  we  were  not  born  to  be  geniuses.  But  we 
think  that  M.  Bourget  makes  a  mistake  in  attributing 
this  peculiarly  inhuman  hardness  of  heart  exclusivel}' 
to  the  artist  of  the  highest  class.  We  are  afraid  that 
our  experience  has  led  us  to  observe  the  vanity — which 
is  really  at  the  root  of  this  moral  deformity — in  those 
who  have  nothing  of  genius  in  their  nature  except  its 
fretfulness  and  its  ferocity. 
1898. 

Complications  Sentimentales 

In  reading  M.  Bourget's  collection  of  short  stories 
called  Voyageuses,  we  observed  that  he  had  quitted  for 
a  moment  that  perfumed  atmosphere  of  the  salon  and 
the  boudoir  which  he  loves,  and  that  he  had  consented 
to  take  us  with  him  out  into  the  fresh  air.  It  was  but 
an  episode;  in  Complications  Sentimentales  we  find 
ourselves  once  more  in  the  scented  world  of  Parisian 
elegance,  among  those  well-bred  people  of  wealth, 
without  occupation,  whose  intrigues  and  passions  M. 
Bourget  has  taught  himself  to  analyse  with  such  extra- 
ordinary precision.     His  new  book  consists  of   three 


M.   Paul  Bourget  245 

tales,  or  short  novels,  one  of  which  at  least,  "  L'tcran," 
might  easily  be  expanded  into  the  form  of  a  complete 
work.  These  three  stories  deal  with  three  critical 
conditions  of  the  mind  and  temper  of  a  woman.  The 
first  and  second  end  in  a  moral  tragedy  :  the  third  ends 
well,  after  excursions  and  alarms,  and  may  be  called  a 
tragi-comedy  of  the  soul.  All  three  analyse  symptoms 
of  that  disease  which  M.  Bourget  believes  to  be  so 
widely  disseminated  in  the  feminine  society  of  the 
day,  "  la  trahison  de  la  femme,"  deception  under  the 
guise  of  a  bland  and  maiden  candour.  The  heroines  of 
the  three  stories  are  all  liars  :  but  while  two  of  them 
are  minxes,  the  third  is  a  dupe.  Admirers  of  that 
clever  novel,  Mensonges,  will  find  themselves  quite  in 
their  element  when  they  read  Complications  Sentimen- 
tales. 

One  of  these  three  stories,  "  L'ficran,"  is  in  its  way 
a  masterpiece.  M.  Bourget  has  never  written  anything 
which  better  exemplifies  his  peculiar  qualities,  the 
insinuating  and  persistent  force  of  his  style,  his  pre- 
occupation with  delicate  subtleties  and  undulations 
of  feeling,  the  skill  with  which  he  renders  the  most 
fleeting  shades  of  mental  sensation.  In  "  L'Ecran," 
moreover,  he  avoids  to  a  remarkable  degree  that  defect 
of  movement  which  has  seriously  damaged  several  of 
his  most  elaborate  books  :  which,  for  instance,  makes 
Une  Idylle  Tragique  scarcely  readable.  His  danger, 
like  that  of  Mr.  Henry  James,  whom  he  resembles  on 
more  sides  than  one,  is  to  delay  in  interminable  psycho- 
logical reflections  until  our  attention  has  betrayed  us, 
and  we  have  lost  the  thread  of  the  story.  This  error, 
or  defect,  would  seem  to  have  presented  itself  as  a  peril 
to  the  mind  of  M.  Bourget :  for  in  his  latest  stories  he 
is  manifestly  on  his  guard  against  it,  and  "  L'Ecran," 


246  French   Profiles 

in  particular,  is  a  really  excellent  example  of  a  tale  told 
to  excite  and  amuse  even  those  who  are  quite  indifferent 
to  the  lesson  it  conveys,  and  to  the  exquisite  art  of  its 
delivery. 

In  the  month  of  June  the  Lautrecs  and  the  Sarheves, 
two  aristocratic  menages  of  Paris,  come  over  to  England 
to  enjoy  the  London  season,  into  the  whirlpool  of  which 
they  descend.  But  at  almost  the  same  moment  arrives 
the  Vicomte  Bertrand  d'Aydie,  who  is  understood  to 
nurse  an  absolutely  hopeless  and  respectful  passion  for 
the  sainted  Marquise  Alyette  de  Lautrec.  This  de- 
votion is  much  "  chaffed  "  in  clubs  and  smilingly  alluded 
to  in  drawing-rooms  as  pure  waste  of  time,  since  the 
purity  and  dignity  of  Madame  de  Lautrec  are  above  the 
possibility  of  suspicion.  But  Madame  de  Lautrec's 
dearest  friend  happens  to  be  the  Vicomtesse  Emmeline 
de  Sarlieve — a  gay  and  amiable  butterfly,  of  whom  no 
one  thinks  seriously  at  all.  Bertrand  and  Emmeline 
have,  however,  for  some  time  past,  carried  on  with 
complete  immunity  a  liaison,  under  the  shadow  of  their 
friendship  for  Alyette,  Veer  an,  the  screen.  Bertrand 
encourages  the  idea  that  he  is  throwing  away  a  desperate 
passion  on  the  icy  heart  of  Alyette,  when  he  is  really 
planning  with  Emmeline  rendezvous,  which  owe  their 
facility  to  the  presence  of  Alyette.  The  reader  does  not 
know  M.  Bourget  if  he  is  not  by  this  time  conscious  that 
here  are  united  all  the  elements  for  one  of  his  most 
ingenious  ethical  problems.  The  visit  of  the  quintette 
to  London  precipitates  the  inevitable  catastrophe. 
M.  Bourget's  sketch  of  our  society  is  wonderfully  skilful 
and  entertaining,  and  Londoners  will  recognise  some 
familiar  faces,  scarcely  disguised  under  the  travesty  of 
false  names. 
1899. 


M.   Paul  Bourget  247 


Outre-Mer 

The  author  of  Outre-Mer  takes  himself,  as  the  phrase 
goes,  rather  seriously.  He  passes  in  New  York  and  in 
Paris  as  a  kind  of  new  De  Tocqueville.  It  is  no 
detraction  of  his  gifts,  nor  of  the  charm  of  his  amus- 
ing volumes,  to  say  that  they  are  not  quite  so  im- 
portant to  an  English  as  to  a  French  or  to  an  American 
audience.  They  are  important  in  France,  because  M. 
Bourget  is  a  highly  accomplished  public  favourite, 
whose  methods  attract  attention  whatever  subject  he 
may  deal  with,  and  whose  mind  has  here  been  given  to 
the  study  of  a  kind  of  life  not  familiar  to  Frenchmen. 
They  are  important  in  America,  because  America  is 
greatly  moved  by  European  opinion,  and  must  be 
flattered  at  so  close  an  examination  of  her  institutions 
by  an  eminent  French  writer.  But  in  England  our 
contact  with  the  United  States  is  closer  and  more  habitual 
than  that  between  those  States  and  France,  while  our 
vanity  is  not  more  stimulated  by  M.  Bourget's  study  of 
America  than  by  M.  Loti's  pictures  of  Jerusalem.  To 
put  it  boldly,  we  know  more  and  care  less  than  the  two 
main  classes  who  will  form  the  audience  of  Outre-Mer. 

Taking,  then,  this  calmer  standpoint,  the  feats  of 
M.  Bourget's  sympathetic  appreciation,  and  the  de- 
ficiencies in  his  equipment,  leave  us,  on  the  whole,  rather 
indifferent.  No  book  of  this  author  has  been  so  much 
talked  of  beforehand,  or  so  ardently  expected,  as  Outre- 
Mer,  and  we  do  not  suppose  that  its  two  main  bodies  of 
readers  will  be  at  all  disappointed.  But  no  philosophical 
Englishman  will  consider  it  the  best  of  M.  Bourget's 
books.  He  will,  for  example,  be  infinitely  less  pleased 
with  it  than  he  was  with  Sensations  d'ltalie,  a  much  less 
popular  work.    The  fact  is  that  in  reading  what  the 


248  French  Profiles 

elegant  psychologist  has  to  say  about  America,  "  on 
y  regrette,"  as  he  himself  would  say,  "  la  douce  et  lente 
Europe."  The  reason  of  this  is,  that  in  deahng  with 
certain  superficial  features  of  a  vast  and  crude  new 
civilisation,  M.  Bourget  is  a  razor  cutting  a  hone.  The 
razor  is  amazingly  sharp  and  bright,  but  it  is  not  doing 
its  proper  business.  M.  Bourget  is  a  subtle  and  minute 
analyst,  whose  gift  it  is  to  distinguish  between  delicate 
orders  of  thought  which  are  yet  closely  allied,  to  deter- 
mine between  new  elements  and  old  ones  in  survival,  to 
provoke,  with  profundity  and  penetration,  long  develop- 
ments of  reverie.  He  is  at  home  in  old  societies  and 
waning  cities;  he  is  a  master  in  the  evocation  of  new 
lights  on  outworn  themes.  He  is  full  of  the  nostalgia 
of  the  past,  and  he  dreams  about  the  dead  while  he 
moves  among  the  living.  It  is  obvious  that  such  a 
writer  is  out  of  place  in  the  study  of  a  country  that  has 
no  past,  no  history,  no  basis  of  death,  a  country  where 
a  man  looks  upon  his  grandfather  as  a  historical 
character,  and  upon  a  house  a  hundred  years  old  as  a 
historical  monument.  What  M.  Bourget  has  done  is 
extraordinarily  clever  and  brilliant,  but  he  was  not  the 
man  to  be  set  to  do  it. 

The  conditions  under  which  the  work  progressed  were, 
though  specious,  not  less  unfavourable  to  its  perfection. 
These  notes,  by  a  famous  Frenchman,  on  the  social  Ufe 
of  America  to-day,  were  prepared  to  appear  first  of  all 
in  an  enterprising  New  York  journal.  That  M.  Bourget 
should  accept  such  a  test  proclaims  his  courage,  and  that 
he  should,  in  the  main,  have  endured  the  ordeal,  his 
accuracy  and  care.  It  is  none  the  less  a  shock  to  find 
the  book  dedicated,  in  a  very  clever  prefatory  epistle,  to 
Mr.  James  Gordon  Bennett,  and  to  realise  that  before 
its  impressions  could  be  given  to  the  world  they  had 


M.   Paul  Bourget  249 

to  pass  through  the  mill  of  the  New  York  Herald.  The 
result  is  a  book  which  is  beautifully  written,  and  which, 
above  all,  gives  the  impression  of  being  sincerely  written 
— a  book  which  contains  many  brilliant  flashes  of 
intuition,  many  just  and  liberal  opinions,  and  some 
pictures  of  high  merit,  but  which,  somehow,  fails  to  be 
philosophical,  and  is  apt  to  slip  between  the  stools  of 
vain  conjecture  and  mere  reporter's  work.  A  great  deal 
which  will  be  read  with  most  entertainment  in  Ouire- 
Mer — the  description  of  Chicago,  for  instance,  and  the 
visit  to  the  night-side  of  New  York — is  really  fitted  to 
appear  in  a  daily  newspaper,  and  then  to  be  forgotten. 
It  is  very  full  and  conscientious,  but  it  is  the  production 
of  a  sublimated  reporter,  and  there  is  precious  little 
De  Tocqueville  about  it. 

This,  however,  may  be  considered  hypercritical. 
M.  Bourget  spent  eight  or  nine  months  in  the  United 
States,  with  no  other  occupation  than  the  collection  of 
the  notes  from  which  these  volumes  are  selected.  He 
had  all  possible  facilities  given  to  him,  and  he  worked 
in  a  fair  and  generous  spirit.  He  was  genuinely  in- 
terested in  America,  interested  more  intelligently,  no 
doubt,  than  any  other  recent  Frenchman  has  been.  It 
would  have  been  strange  if  he  had  not  written  a  book 
which  repaid  perusal.  The  faults  of  M.  Bourget's  style 
have  always  been  over-elaboration  and  excess  of  detail. 
Here  he  has  been  tempted  to  indulge  these  frailties, 
and  we  cannot  say  that  he  is  not  occasionally  tedious 
when  he  lingers  upon  facts  and  conditions  obvious  to 
all  Englishmen  who  visit  America.  Hence,  we  like  his 
book  best  where  it  gives  us  the  results  of  the  application 
of  his  subtle  intellect  to  less  familiar  matters.  All  he 
has  to  say  about  the  vitaUty  of  the  Catholic  Church 
in  the  United  States  is  worthy  of  close  attention.     His 


250  French  Profiles 

interviews  with  Cardinal  Gibbon  and  Archbishop  Ireland 
are  of  material  interest,  and  his  notes  on  the  socialistic 
tendencies  of  American  Catholicism  singularly  valuable. 
No  pages  here  are  more  graphic  than  those  which  record 
a  visit  to  a  Roman  church  in  New  York,  and  the  sermon 
which  the  author  listened  to  there.  He  was  struck,  as 
all  visitors  to  America  must  be,  with  the  absence  of 
reverie,  of  the  spiritual  and  experimental  spirit,  in  the 
teaching  and  tendency  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in  America, 
and  with  its  practical  energy,  its  businesslike  activity 
and  vehemence.  In  a  few  words  M.  Bourget  renders 
with  admirable  skill  that  air  of  antiquity  and  Catholic 
piety  which  make  Baltimore  more  like  a  city  of  Southern 
Europe  than  any  other  in  the  United  States.  In  ob- 
servation of  this  kind  M.  Bourget  can  always  be 
trusted. 

As  befits  the  inquiry  of  a  Latin  psychologist,  the 
question  of  woman  takes  a  very  prominent  part  in  the 
investigation  of  M.  Bourget.  On  this  subject  what  he 
has  to  say  and  what  he  has  to  admit  ignorance  of  are 
equally  interesting.  He  has  to  confess  himself  baffled 
by  that  extraordinary  outcome  of  Western  civilisation, 
the  American  girl,  but  he  revenges  himself  by  the  nota- 
tion of  innumerable  instances  of  her  pecuUarities  and 
idiosyncrasies.  On  the  whole,  though  she  puzzles  him, 
he  is  greatly  delighted  with  her.  We  remember  hearing 
of  the  visit  paid  to  Newport  by  a  young  French  poet 
of  the  Symbolists,  who  was  well  acquainted  with  the 
American  language,  but  whose  manners  were  all  adjusted 
to  the  model  of  the  Boulevard  St.  Michel.  He  made 
a  dozen  serious  blunders,  all  of  which  were  benignly  for- 
given, before  he  settled  down  to  some  due  recognition 
of  the  cold,  free,  stimulating  and  sphinx-hke  creature 
that  woman  is  on  the  shores  of  America.     M-  Bourget 


M.   Paul  Bourget  251 

is  too  much  a  man  of  the  world,  and  has  been  too  care- 
fully trained,  to  err  in  this  way,  but  his  wonder  is  no  less 
pronounced.  He  comes  to  the  curious  "  resultat  que  le 
desir  de  la  femme  est  demeure  au  second  rang  dans  les 
preoccupations  de  ces  hommes."  He  considers,  as 
other  observers  have  done,  that  this  condition  of  things 
can  be  but  transitory,  and  that  the  strange  apotheosis 
of  the  American  girl,  with  all  that  it  presupposes  in  the 
way  of  reticence  of  manners,  is  but  a  passing  phase. 
He  falls  into  an  eloquent  description  of  the  American 
idol,  the  sexless  woman  of  the  United  States,  and  closes 
it  with  a  passage  which  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in 
his  volumes  : — 

"  Cette  femme  peut  ne  pas  etre  aimee.  Elle  n'a  pas 
besoin  d'etre  aimee.  Ce  n'est  ni  la  volupte  ni  la  ten- 
dresse  qu'elle  symbolise.  Elle  est  comme  un  objet 
d'art  vivant,  une  savante  et  demiere  composition 
humaine  qui  atteste  que  le  Yankee,  ce  desespere  d'hier, 
ce  vaincu  du  vieux  monde,  a  su  tirer  de  ce  sauvage 
univers  oii  il  fut  jete  par  le  sort  toute  une  civilisation 
nouvelle,  incarnee  dans  cette  femme-la,  son  luxe  et  son 
orgueil.  Tout  s'eclaire  de  cette  civilisation  au  regard 
de  ces  yeux  profonds,  .  .  .  tout  ce  qui  est  I'ldealisme 
de  ce  pays  sans  Ideal,  ce  qui  sera  sa  perte  peut-etre, 
mais  qui  jusqu'ici  demeure  sa  grandeur  :  la  foi  absolue, 
unique,  systematique  et  indomptable  dans  la  Volonte." 

With  the  West  the  author  does  not  seem  to  have  any 
personal  acquaintance.  In  his  chapter  on  "  Cowboys  " 
he  tells  some  marvellous  stories.  We  know  not  what 
to  think  of  the  vivacious  anecdote  of  the  men  who, 
weary  to  see  some  eminent  emanation  of  the  East, 
planned  the  kidnapping  of  Madame  Sarah  Bernhardt 
as  she  passed  Green  River  on  her  way  to  the  Pacific. 
The  great  actress  had  taken  an  earlier  express,  and  was 


252  French   Profiles 

saved  from  her  embarrassing  captors.  M.  Bourget 
occupies  nearly  fifty  pages  with  a  "  Confession  of  a  Cow- 
boy," the  source  of  which  is  very  vaguely  stated.  All 
this,  we  must  acknowledge,  seems  rather  poor  to  us, 
and  must  have  been  collected  at  worse  than  second- 
hand. Those  chapters,  on  the  contrary,  which  deal 
with  the  South,  are  particularly  fresh  and  charming. 
There  is  no  sort  of  connection  between  the  close  of  the 
second  volume,  which  deals  with  an  excursion  through 
Georgia  and  Florida,  and  the  rest  of  the  book,  yet  no 
one  will  wish  this  species  of  appendix  omitted.  The 
author  gives  an  exceedingly  picturesque  and  humorous 
picture  of  life  in  a  Georgian  watering-place,  which  he 
calls  Phillipeville,  where  somebody  or  other  is  lynched 
every  year.  M.  Bourget,  as  in  duty  bound,  tells  a  spirited 
story  of  a  "  lynchage."  He  describes,  too,  in  his  very 
best  style,  the  execution  of  a  rebellious  but  repentant 
mulatto. 

When  our  author  proceeded  still  further  South,  he 
had  not  the  good  fortune  to  see  such  striking  sights,  or 
to  meet  with  so  singular  a  population.  But  at  Jackson- 
ville, Florida,  he  was  able,  as  nowhere  else,  to  study  the 
negro  at  home,  and  at  St.  Augustine  he  discovered  to 
his  dehght  a  sort  of  Cannes  or  Monte  Carlo  of  America, 
with  its  gardens  of  oranges  and  jasmine,  its  green  oaks  and 
its  oleanders.  He  rejoiced,  after  his  long  inland  wander- 
ings, to  see  the  ocean  breaking  on  the  reefs  of  Anastasia. 
Upon  the  whole,  whether  in  the  North  or  the  South, 
M.  Bourget  has  been  pleased  with  the  United  States. 
He  has  recognised  the  two  great  defects  of  that  country  : 
its  incoherence,  and  its  brutality.  He  has  recognised  a 
factitious  element  in  its  cultivation,  corruption  in  its 
politics,  and  a  general  excess  in  its  activity.  He  delights 
in  three  typical  American  words,  and  discovers  "  puff," 


M.   Paul  Bourget  253 

"  boom,"  and  "  bluff  "  at  every  turn.  He  comes  back 
to  Europe  at  last  with  that  emotion  of  gratitude  which 
every  European  feels,  however  warmly  he  has  been 
welcomed  in  America,  and  in  however  favourable  a  light 
American  life  has  been  shown  to  him.  Yet  he  is  con- 
scious of  its  high  virtues,  its  noble  possibihties,  and  on 
the  whole  his  picture  of  the  great  Republic,  so  carefully 
and  modestly  prepared,  so  conscientiously  composed,  is 
in  a  high  degree  a  flattering  and  attractive  one. 

1895. 

L'Etape 

We  are  so  little  accustomed  in  England  to  the  pole- 
mical novel,  or,  indeed,  to  the  novel  of  ideas  in  any 
form,  that  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  the  condition 
of  mind  which  has  led  M.  Bourget  to  fling  himself  into 
the  arena  of  French  politics  with  a  romance  which  must 
give  extreme  offence  to  the  majority  of  its  possible 
readers,  and  which  runs  violently  counter  to  the  tra- 
ditional complacency  of  French  democratic  life.  It  is 
probable  that  M.  Bourget  no  longer  cares  very  much 
whether  he  offends  or  pleases,  and,  doubtless,  the  more 
he  scourges  the  many,  the  more  he  endears  himself  to 
the  comparatively  few.  Here,  in  England,  we  are 
called  upon — if  only  English  people  would  comprehend 
the  fact — to  contemplate  and  not  to  criticise  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  idiosjmcrasies  of  our  neighbours.  If 
we  could  but  learn  the  lesson  that  a  curious  attention, 
an  inquisitive  observation  into  foreign  modes  of  thought 
becomes  us  very  well,  but  that  we  are  not  asked  for 
our  opinion,  it  would  vastly  facilitate  our  relations.  In 
calling  attention  to  M.  Bourget's  extremely  interesting 
and  powerful  novel,  I  expressly  deprecate  the  impertin- 
ence of  our  "  taking  a  side  "  in  the  matter  of  its  aim. 


254  French   Profiles 

We  have  our  own  national  failings  to  attend  to ;  let  us, 
for  goodness'  sake,  avoid  the  folly  of  hauling  our  neigh- 
bours up  to  a  tribunal  of  Anglo-Saxon  political  virtue. 
It  should  be  enough  for  us  that  the  phenomena  which 
in  France  produce  a  Monneron  on  the  one  side  and  a 
Ferrand  on  the  other  are  very  interesting.  Let  us 
observe  them  as  closely  as  we  can,  but  not  hazard  a 
decision. 

The  title  of  M.  Bourget's  book  would  offer  me  a  great 
difficulty  if  I  were  called  upon  to  translate  it,  and  I  am 
not  sure  that  a  Frenchman  will  immediately  understand 
what  is  symbolised  by  it.  An  etape  is  a  stage,  a  station ; 
on  hrule  V etape  by  rushing  through,  without,  as  it  were, 
stopping  to  change  horses.  Is,  then,  the  theme  of  this 
book  the  stage,  the  day's  march,  as  it  were,  which  its 
over-educated  peasant  takes  in  passing  over  to  Con- 
servatism ?  Does  the  Monnerons'  fault  consist  in  their 
having  "  burned  "  their  etape  in  their  too  great  hurry 
to  cut  a  figure  in  society  ?  It  is  not  until  the  final 
page  516  that  we  meet  with  the  word  and  the  image, 
even  as  we  have  to  reach  the  last  paragraph  of  Stendhal's 
masterpiece  before  we  hear  of  the  Chartreuse  de  Parme. 
Enough,  then,  that  the  subject  of  this  itape  is  the  story 
of  a  family  of  peasants  from  the  Ardeche,  one  of  whom 
has  received  an  education  in  excess  of  his  fitness  for 
it;  has  become,  in  other  words,  a  functionary  and  a 
bourgeois  without  the  necessary  preparation.  It  might 
be  rash  to  suppose  that  so  practised  an  author  as  M. 
Bourget  would  condescend  to  be  influenced  by  a  much 
younger  writer,  or  else  I  should  say  that  throughout  this 
book  I  am  constrained  to  perceive  the  spirit  of  M. 
Maurice  Barres.  The  attitude  of  the  writer  of  L'litape 
has,  at  all  events,  become  astonishingly  identical  with 
that  of  the  author  of  Les  Deracinis,  and  to  have  read 


M.   Paul  Bourget  255 

that  extraordinary  work  will  prepare  a  reader  in  many 
ways  for  the  study  of  the  novel  before  us.  In  both  the 
one  and  the  other  it  would,  perhaps,  be  more  critical  to 
say  that  we  see  fructifying  and  spreading  the  pessimist 
influence  of  Taine. 

The  uncomfortable  and  paradoxical  condition  of 
modem  society  in  France  is  attributed  by  these  writers 
of  the  school  of  Taine  to  the  obstinate  cultivation  of 
political  chimeras  which  have  outlived  the  excitement 
of  the  Revolution.  The  keynote  to  the  attitude  of 
modem  democracy  is  conceived  by  M.  Bourget  to  be 
hostility  to  the  origins  and  history  of  the  country.  The 
good  hero  of  the  story,  M.  Ferrand  (who  is  inclined,  like 
all  good  heroes,  to  be  a  little  oracular),  reminds  the 
young  socialist  of  a  passage  in  Plato's  Timceus  where  we 
are  told  that  a  most  ancient  priest  of  the  temple  of  Sais 
warned  Solon  that  the  weakness  of  the  Greeks  was  their 
possessing  no  ancient  doctrine  transmitted  by  their 
ancestors,  no  education  passed  down  from  age  to  age  by 
venerable  teachers.  It  is  this  lack  of  authoritative 
continuity  which  M.  Bourget  deplores;  his  view  of 
1789  is  that  it  snapped  the  thread  that  bound  society 
to  the  past,  that  it  vulgarised,  uprooted,  shattered, 
and  destroyed  things  which  were  essential  to  national 
prosperity  and  to  individual  happiness.  He  thinks  that 
one  of  these  links  still  exists  and  can  be  strengthened 
indefinitely — namely,  the  Catholic  religion.  Therefore, 
according  to  M.  Bourget,  the  first  thing  a  Frenchman  has 
to  do  is  to  abandon  his  ideology  and  his  collectivism, 
which  lead  only  to  anarchical  and  incoherent  forms  of 
misery,  and  to  humble  himself  before  the  Church,  by 
the  aid  of  which  alone  a  wholesome  society  can  be  rebuilt 
on  the  mins  of  a  hundred  years  of  revolutionary  madness. 

One  is  bound,  however,  to  point  out  that  if  Taine's 


256  French   Profiles 

teaching  can  be  interpreted  in  a  reactionary  sense, 
there  is  nothing  in  his  writings  which  seems  to  justify 
its  being  distorted  for  poUtical  and  clerical  purposes. 
I  have  endeavoured  to  summarise  as  fairly  as  possible 
what  seem  to  be  M.  Bourget's  views  about  "  the  lack  of 
authoritative  continuity."  But  Taine  is  careful,  in 
L'Ancien  Regime,  precisely  to  insist  that  all  the  Revolu- 
tion did  was  to  transfer  the  exercise  of  absolute  power 
from  the  King  to  a  central  body  of  men  in  Paris.  Here 
was  no  breach  of  continuity ;  it  was  merely  a  new  form 
of  precisely  the  same  thing.  M.  Bourget,  and  those 
who  act  with  him,  seem  to  overlook  completely  the  kernel 
of  Taine's  argument,  namely,  that  the  Revolution  was 
not  a  spontaneous  growth,  but  the  outcome  of  three 
centuries  of  antecedent  events.  The  latest  reaction- 
aries, I  must  confess,  appear  to  me  to  introduce  an 
element  of  wilful  obscurity  into  a  position  which  Taine 
left  admirably  clear  and  plain. 

Considered  purely  as  a  story,  L'itape  is  told  with  all 
M.  Bourget's  accustomed  solidity  and  refinement.  It 
has,  moreover,  a  vigorous  evolution  which  captivates 
the  attention,  and  prevents  the  elaboration  of  the  author's 
analysis  from  ever  becoming  dull.  The  action  passes 
in  university  society,  and  practically  within  the  famihes 
of  two  classical  professors  at  the  Sorbonne.  M.  Ferrand, 
the  Catholic,  who  is  all  serenity  and  joy,  has  a  gentle, 
lovely  daughter,  Brigitte.  She  is  courted  by  Jean,  the 
eldest  son  of  M.  Monneron,  who  has  the  misfortune 
to  be  a  Republican  and  a  Dreyfusard,  and  everything, 
in  fact,  which  is  sinister  and  fatal  in  the  eyes  of  M. 
Bourget.  Brigitte  will  not  marry  Jean  Monneron 
unless  he  consents  to  become  a  Catholic,  and  the  intrigue 
of  the  novel  proceeds,  with  alarming  abruptness,  during 
the  days  in  which  Jean  is  making  up  his  mind  to  take 


M.  Paul   Bourget  257 

the  leap.  Terrible  things  happen  to  the  agitated 
members  of  the  Monneron  family — things  which  lead 
them  to  forgery  and  attempted  murder — and  all  on 
account  of  their  deplorable  political  opinions,  while 
the  happy  and  virtuous  Ferrands  sit  up  aloft,  in  the 
purity  of  their  reaction,  and,  ultimately,  as  it  happens, 
take  care  of  the  life  of  poor  Jean.  Told  baldly  thus, 
or  rather  not  told  at  all,  but  summarised,  the  plot  seems 
preposterous;  and  it  cannot,  I  think,  be  denied  that 
it  is  in  some  degree  mechanical.  Is  not  this  a  fault  to 
which  those  novelists  in  France  who  throw  in  their  lot 
with  the  disciples  of  Balzac  are  peculiarly  liable  ? 

Plot,  however,  in  our  trivial  sense,  is  the  least  matter 
about  which  M.  Bourget  troubles  himself.  He  is 
occupied  with  two  things  :  the  presentation  of  his  thesis 
— we  may  almost  say  his  propaganda — and  the  conduct 
of  his  personages  when  face  to  face  in  moments  of  ex- 
alted spiritual  excitement.  In  the  past,  he  has  some- 
times shirked  the  clash  of  these  crises,  as  if  shrinking  a 
little  from  the  mere  physical  disturbance  of  them.  But 
he  does  not  do  so  in  UEtafe,  which  will  be  found  "  awfully 
thrilling,"  even  by  the  Hildas  of  the  circulating  libraries. 
In  the  study  of  the  "  Union  Tolstoi,"  which  is  a  sort  of 
Toynbee  Hall,  founded  in  the  heart  of  Paris  by  Cremieu- 
Dax  (a  curious  reminiscence,  whether  conscious  or  not, 
of  our  own  Leonard  Montefiore),  M.  Bourget  is  led  away 
by  the  blindness  of  his  exclusive  fanaticism.  A  lighter 
touch,  a  little  of  the  playfulness  of  humour,  would  have 
rendered  more  probable  and  human  this  humanitarian 
club  of  Jews  and  Protestants  and  Anarchists  and  faddists, 
united  in  nothing  but  in  their  enmity  to  the  ancient 
government  and  faith  of  France.  And  the  ruin  of  the 
"  Union  Tolstoi  "  is  shown  to  be  so  inevitable,  that  we 
are  left  to  wonder  how  it  could  ever  have  seemed  to 
flourish. 
s 


258  French   Profiles 

The  portraits  in  the  book,  however,  are  neither 
mechanical  nor  hard.  The  old  Monneron,  gentle, 
learned,  and  humane,  but  bound  hand  and  foot  by  his 
network  of  political  prejudices;  the  impudent  Antoine; 
Julie,  the  t5^e  of  the  girl  emancipated  on  Anglo- 
American  lines,  and  doomed  to  violent  catastrophe; 
the  enthusiastic  and  yet  patient,  fanatical  and  yet 
tender  milUonaire  socialist,  Solomon  Cremieu-Dax;  in 
a  lesser  degree  the  unfortunate  Abbe  Chanut,  who 
believes  that  the  democracy  can  be  reconciled  to  the 
Church — all  these  are  admirable  specimens  of  M. 
Bourget's  art  of  portraiture.  The  novel  is  profoundly 
interesting,  although  hardly  addressed  to  those  who 
run  while  they  read;  but  it  must  not  be  taken  as  a 
text-book  of  the  state  of  France  without  a  good  deal 
of  counteracting  Republican  literature.  Yet  it  is  a 
document  of  remarkable  value  and  a  charming  work 
of  art. 

X902. 


M.    RENiL    BAZIN 


^ 


M.    REN£    BAZIN 

When  I  was  young  I  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing 
a  prominent  Plymouth  Brother,  an  intelligent  and 
fanatical  old  gentleman,  into  whose  house  there  strayed 
an  attractive  volume,  which  he  forbade  his  grown-up 
son  and  daughter  to  peruse.  A  day  or  two  later,  his 
children,  suddenly  entering  his  library,  found  him  deep 
in  the  study  of  the  said  dangerous  book,  and  gently 
upbraided  him  with  doing  what  he  had  expressly  told 
them  not  to  do.  He  replied,  with  calm  good-humour, 
"  Ah  !  but  you  see  I  have  a  much  stronger  spiritual 
digestion  than  you  have !  "  This  question  of  the 
"  spiritual  digestion  "  is  one  which  must  always  trouble 
those  who  are  asked  to  recommend  one  or  another 
species  of  reading  to  an  order  of  undefined  readers. 
Who  shall  decide  what  books  are  and  what  books  are  not 
proper  to  be  read  ?  There  are  some  people  who  can 
pasture  unpoisoned  upon  the  memoirs  of  Casanova,  and 
others  who  are  disturbed  by  The  Idyls  of  the  King.  They 
tell  me  that  in  Minneapolis  Othello  is  considered  ob- 
jectionable; our  own  great-aunts  thought  Jane  Eyre 
no  book  for  girls.  In  the  vast  complicated  garden  of 
literature  it  is  always  difficult  to  say  where  the  toxico- 
logist  comes  in,  and  what  distinguishes  him  from  the 
purveyor  of  a  salutary  moral  tonic.  In  recent  French 
romance,  everybody  must  acknowledge,  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  lay  down  a  hard  and  fast  rule. 
The  object  of  this  chapter,  however,  is  not  to  decide 

26Z 


262  French   Profiles 

how  far  the  daring  apologist  can  go  in  the  recommen- 
dation of  new  French  novel-writers,  but  to  offer  to  the 
notice  of  shy  English  readers  a  particularly  "  nice  "  one. 
But,  before  attempting  to  introduce  M.  Ren6  Bazin,  I 
would  reflect  a  moment  on  the  very  curious  condition 
of  the  French  novel  in  general  at  the  present  time.  No 
one  who  observes  the  entire  field  of  current  French 
literature  without  prejudice  will  deny  that  the  novel  is 
passing  through  a  period  which  must  prove  highly 
perilous  to  its  future,  a  period  at  once  of  transition  and 
of  experiment.  The  school  of  realism  or  naturaUsm, 
which  was  founded  upon  the  practice  of  Balzac  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  practices  of  George  Sand  and  of  Dumas 
pere,  achieved,  about  twenty  years  ago,  one  of  those 
violent  victories  which  are  more  dangerous  to  a  cause 
than  defeat  itself.  It  was  in  1880  that  M.  Zola  pub- 
lished that  volume  of  polemical  criticism  which  had  so 
far-reaching  an  effect  in  France  and  elsewhere,  and 
which  was  strangely  ignored  in  England — Le  Roman 
Experimental.  This  was  just  the  point  of  time  at  which 
the  Rougon-Macquart  series  of  socio-pathological 
romances  was  receiving  its  maximum  of  hostile  atten- 
tion. M.  Zola's  book  of  criticism  was  a  plausible, 
audacious,  magnificently  casuistical  plea,  not  merely 
for  the  acceptance  of  the  realistic  method,  but  for  the 
exclusion  of  every  other  method  from  the  processes  of 
fiction.  It  had  its  tremendous  effect ;  during  the  space 
of  some  five  years  the  "  romanciers  naturalistes,"  with 
M.  Zola  at  their  head,  had  it  all  their  own  way.  Then 
came,  in  1885,  La  Terre,  an  object-lesson  in  the  abuse 
of  the  naturalistic  formula,  and  people  began  to  open 
their  eyes  to  its  drawbacks.  And  then  we  all  dissolved 
in  laughter  over  the  protest  of  the  "  Cinq  Purs,"  and  the 
defection  of  a  whole  group  of  disciples.     M,  Zola,  like 


M.  Rene  Bazin  263 

the  weary  Titan  that  he  was,  went  on,  but  the  prestige 
of  naturalism  was  undermined. 

But,  meanwhile,  the  old  forms  of  procedure  in  romance 
had  been  dishonoured.  It  was  not  enough  that  the  weak 
places  in  the  realistic  armour  should  be  pierced  by  the 
arrows  of  a  humaner  criticism ;  the  older  warriors  whom 
Goliath  had  overthrown  had  to  be  set  on  their  legs  again. 
And  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  some  of  them  were  found 
to  be  dreadfully  the  worse  for  wear.  No  one  who  had 
read  Flaubert  and  the  Goncourts,  no  one  who  had  been 
introduced  to  Tolstoi  and  Dostoieffsky,  could  any 
longer  endure  the  trick  of  Cherbuliez.  It  was  like  going 
back  to  William  Black  after  Stevenson  and  Mr.  Barrie. 
Even  Ferdinand  Fabre,  the  Thomas  Hardy  of  the 
Cevennes,  seemed  to  have  lost  his  savour.  The  novels 
of  Octave  Feuillet  were  classics,  but  no  one  yearned  for 
fresh  imitations  of  Monsieur  de  Cantors.  Pierre  Loti 
turned  more  and  more  exclusively  to  adventures  of  the 
ego  in  tropical  scenery.  Alphonse  Daudet,  after  a  melan- 
choly eclipse  of  his  fresh  early  genius,  passed  away. 
Even  before  the  death  of  Edmond,  the  influence  of  the 
Goncourts,  although  still  potent,  spread  into  other  fields 
of  intellectual  effort,  and  became  negligible  so  far  as  the 
novel,  pure  and  simple,  was  concerned.  What  was  most 
noteworthy  in  the  French  belles-lettres  of  ten  years  ago 
was  the  brilUant  galaxy  of  critics  that  swam  into  our 
ken.  In  men  hke  MM.  Lemaitre,  Anatole  France, 
Brunetiere  and  Gaston  Paris,  the  intelligent  reader 
found  purveyors  of  entertainment  which  was  as  charming 
as  fiction,  and  much  more  solid  and  stimulating.  Why 
read  dull  novels  when  one  could  be  so  much  better 
amused  by  a  new  volume  of  La  Vie  Litter  aire  ?       i  i 

In  pure  criticism  there  is  now  again  a  certain  de- 
pression in  French  litera,ture.    The  most  brilliant  o^ 


264  French   Profiles 

the  group  I  have  just  mentioned  has  turned  from  the 
adventures  of  books  to  the  analysis  of  life.  But  the 
author  of  L'Anneau  d'Amethyste  is  hardly  to  be  counted 
among  the  novelists.  His  philosophical  satires,  sparkling 
with  wit  and  malice,  incomparable  in  their  beauty  of 
expression,  are  doubtless  the  most  exquisite  productions 
proceeding  to-day  from  the  pen  of  a  Frenchman,  but 
L'Orme  du  Mail  is  no  more  a  novel  than  Friendship' s 
Garland  is.  Among  the  talents  which  were  directly 
challenged  by  the  theories  of  the  naturalistic  school, 
the  one  which  seems  to  have  escaped  least  battered  from 
the  fray  is  that  of  M.  Paul  Bourget.  He  stands  apart, 
like  Mr.  Henry  James — the  European  writer  with  whom 
he  is  in  closest  relation.  But  even  over  this  delicious 
writer  a  certain  change  is  passing.  He  becomes  less  and 
less  a  novelist,  and  more  and  more  a  writer  of  nouvelles 
or  short  stories.  La  Duchesse  Bleue  was  not  a  roman, 
it  was  a  nouvelle  writ  large,  and  in  the  volume  of  con- 
summate studies  of  applied  psychology  {Un  Homme 
d' Affaires),  which  reaches  me  as  I  write  these  Unes,  I 
find  a  M.  Paul  Bourget  more  than  ever  removed  from 
the  battle-field  of  common  fiction,  more  than  ever 
isolated  in  his  exquisite  attenuation  of  the  enigmas  of 
the  human  heart.  On  the  broader  field,  M.  Marcel 
Prevost  and  M.  Paul  Hervieu  support  the  Balzac 
tradition  after  their  strenuous  and  intelhgent  fashion. 
It  is  these  two  writers  who  continue  for  us  the  manu- 
facture of  the  "  French  novel  "  pure  and  simple.  Do 
they  console  us  for  Flaubert  and  Maupassant  and  Gon- 
court  ?  Me,  I  am  afraid,  they  do  as  yet  but  faintly 
console. 

Elsewhere,  in  the  French  fiction  with  which  the 
century  is  closing,  we  see  little  but  experiment,  and 
that    experiment  largely  takes  the  form  of    pastiche. 


M.   Rene  Bazin  265 

One  thing  has  certainly  been  learned  by  the  brief 
tyranny  of  realism,  namely,  that  the  mere  exterior  pheno- 
mena of  experience,  briefly  observed,  do  not  exhaust 
the  significance  of  life.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  a 
worthy  intellectual  effort,  a  desire  to  make  thought 
take  its  place  again  in  aesthetic  literature,  marks  the 
tentatives,  often  very  unsatisfactory  in  themselves  and 
unrelated  to  one  another,  which  are  produced  by  the 
younger  novelists  in  France.  These  books  address,  it 
must  never  be  forgotten,  an  audience  far  more  cultivated, 
far  less  hide-bound  in  its  prejudices,  than  does  the 
output  of  the  popular  English  novelist.  It  is  difficult 
to  conceive  of  a  British  Huysmans  translating,  with 
the  utmost  disregard  for  plot,  the  voluptuous  languors 
of  religion;  it  is  even  more  difficult  to  conceive  of  a 
British  Maurice  Barres  engaged,  in  the  form  of  fiction, 
in  the  glorification  of  a  theory  of  individualism.  It  is 
proper  that  we  should  do  honour  to  the  man  who  writes 
and  to  the  public  that  reads,  with  zeal  and  curiosity, 
these  attempts  to  deal  with  spiritual  problems  in  the 
form  of  fiction.  But  it  is  surely  not  unfair  to  ask  whether 
the  experiment  so  courageously  attempted  is  perfectly 
successful  ?  It  is  not  improper  to  suggest  that  neither 
La  Cathedrale  nor  Les  Deracines  is  exactly  to  be  styled 
an  ideal  novel. 

More  completely  fulfilling  the  classic  purpose  of  the 
romance,  the  narrative,  are  some  of  the  experimental 
works  in  fiction  which  I  have  indicated  as  belonging  to 
the  section  of  pastiche.  In  this  class  I  will  name  but 
three,  the  Aphrodite  of  M.  Pierre  Louys,  La  Nichina  of 
M.  Hugues  Rebell,  and  La  Route  d't^meraude  of  M. 
Eugene  Demolder.  These,  no  doubt,  have  been  the  most 
successful,  and  the  most  deservedly  successful,  of  a  sort 
of  novel  in  these  last  years  in  France,  books  in  which 


266  French  Profiles 

the  life  of  past  ages  has  been  resuscitated  with  a  full 
sense  of  the  danger  which  lurks  in  pedantry  and  in  a 
didactic  dryness.  With  these  may  be  included  the 
extraordinary  pre-historic  novels  of  the  brothers  Rosny. 
This  kind  of  story  suffers  from  two  dangers.  Firstly, 
nothing  so  soon  loses  its  pleasurable  surprise,  and  be- 
comes a  tiresome  trick,  as  pastiche.  Already,  in  the 
case  of  more  than  one  of  the  young  writers  just  men- 
tioned, fatigue  of  fancy  has  obviously  set  in.  The  other 
peril  is  a  heritage  from  the  Naturalists,  and  makes  the 
discussion  of  recent  French  fiction  extremely  difficult 
in  England,  namely,  the  determination  to  gain  a  sharp, 
vivid  effect  by  treating,  with  surgical  coolness,  the 
maladies  of  society.  Hence — to  skate  as  lightly  as 
possible  over  this  thin  ice — the  difficulty  of  daring  to 
recommend  to  English  readers  a  single  book  in  recent 
French  fiction.  We  have  spoken  of  a  strong  spiritual 
digestion ;  but  most  of  the  romances  of  the  latest  school 
require  the  digestion  of  a  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  or  of 
the  matron  in  a  Lock  hospital. 

Therefore — and  not  to  be  always  pointing  to  the 
Quaker-coloured  stories  of  M.  ^fedouard  Rod — the  joy 
and  surprise  of  being  able  to  recommend,  without  the 
possibihty  of  a  blush,  the  latest  of  all  the  novelists  of 
France.  It  has  been  necessary,  in  the  briefest  language, 
to  sketch  the  existing  situation  in  French  fiction,  in  order 
to  make  appreciable  the  purity,  the  freshness,  the 
simplicity  of  M.  Rene  Bazin.  It  is  only  within  the  last 
season  or  two  that  he  has  come  prominently  to  the  front, 
although  he  has  been  writing  quietly  for  about  fifteen 
years.  It  would  be  absurd  to  exaggerate.  M.  Bazin 
is  not,  and  will  not  be  here  presented  as  being,  a  great 
force  in  literature.  If  it  were  the  part  of  criticism  to 
deal  in  negatives,  it  would  be  easy  to  mention  a  great 


M.   Rene  Bazin  267 

many  things  which  M.  Bazin  is  not.  Among  others,  he 
is  not  a  profound  psychologist;  people  who  like  the 
novels  of  M.  ^lemir  Bourges,  and  are  able  to  understand 
them,  will,  unquestionably,  pronounce  Les  Noellet  and 
La  Sarcelle  Bleue  very  insipid.  But  it  is  possible  that 
the  French  novelists  of  these  last  five  years  have  been 
trying  to  be  a  great  deal  too  clever,  that  they  have 
starved  the  large  reading  public  with  the  extravagant 
intellectuaUty  of  their  stories.  Whether  that  be  so  or 
not,  it  is  at  least  pleasant  to  have  one  man  writing,  in 
excellent  French,  refined,  cheerful,  and  sentimental 
novels  of  the  most  ultra-modest  kind,  books  that  every 
girl  may  read,  that  every  guardian  of  youth  may  safely 
leave  about  in  any  room  of  the  house.  I  do  not  say — I 
am  a  thousand  miles  from  thinking — that  this  is  every- 
thing ;  but  I  protest — even  in  face  of  the  indignant  Bar 
of  Bruges — that  this  is  much. 

Little  seems  to  have  been  told  about  the  very  quiet 
career  of  M.  Rene  Bazin,  who  is  evidently  an  enemy 
to  self-advertisement.  He  was  born  at  Angers  in  1853, 
and  was  educated  at  the  little  seminary  of  Montgazon. 
Of  his  purely  literary  career  all  that  is  known  appears 
to  be  that  in  1886  he  published  a  romance.  Ma  Xante 
Giron,  to  which  I  shall  presently  return,  which  fell 
almost  unnoticed  from  the  press.  It  found  its  way, 
however,  to  one  highly  appropriate  reader,  M.  Ludovic 
Halevy,  to  whom  its  author  was  entirely  unknown. 
M.  Halevy  was  so  much  struck  with  the  cleanliness  and 
the  freshness  of  this  new  writer  that  he  recommended 
the  editor  of  the  Journal  des  Debats  to  secure  him 
as  a  contributor.  To  the  amazement  of  M.  Bazin,  he 
was  invited,  by  a  total  stranger,  to  join  the  staff  of  the 
Debats.  He  did  so,  and  for  that  newspaper  he  has 
written  almost  exclusively  ever  since,  and  there  bis  sue- 


268  French   Profiles 

cessive  novels  and  books  of  travel  have  first  appeared. 
It  is  said  that  M.  Halevy  tried,  without  success,  to  induce 
the  French  Academy  to  give  one  of  its  prizes  to  Ma 
Xante  Giron.  That  attempt  failed,  but  no  doubt  it  was 
to  the  same  admirer  that  was  due  the  crowning  of  M. 
Rene  Bazin's  second  story,  Une  Tache  d'Encre.  One 
can  hardly  doubt  that  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when 
M.  Bazin  will  himself  be  in  a  position  to  secure  the 
prizes  of  the  Academy  for  still  younger  aspirants.  This 
account  of  M,  Bazin  is  meagre;  but  although  it  is  all 
that  I  know  of  his  blameless  career,  I  feel  sure  that  it 
is,  as  Froude  once  said  on  a  parallel  occasion,  "  nothing 
to  what  the  angels  know." 

When  we  turn  to  M.  Bazin's  earliest  novel,  Ma  Xante 
Giron,  it  is  not  difficult  to  divine  what  it  was  that 
attracted  to  this  stranger  the  amiable  author  of  L'Abbe 
Constantin  and  Monsieur  et  Madame  Cardinal.  It  is 
a  sprightly  story  of  provincial  hfe,  a  dish,  as  was  wickedly 
said  of  one  of  M.  Halevy's  own  books,  consisting  of 
nothing  but  angels  served  up  with  a  white  sauce  of  virtue. 
The  action  is  laid  in  a  remote  corner  of  Western  France, 
the  Craonais,  half  in  Vendee,  half  in  Brittany.  There 
are  fine  old  sporting  characters,  who  bring  down  hares 
at  fabulous  distances  to  the  reproach  of  younger  shots ; 
there  are  excellent  cures,  the  souls  of  generosity  and 
unworldliness,  with  a  touch  of  eccentricity  to  keep  them 
human.  There  is  an  admirable  young  man,  the  Baron 
Jacques,  who  falls  desperately  in  love  with  the  beautiful 
and  modest  Mademoiselle  de  Seigny,  and  has  just  worked 
himself  up  to  the  point  of  proposing,  when  he  unfortun- 
ately hears  that  she  has  become  the  greatest  heiress  in 
the  country-side.  Then,  of  course,  his  honourable 
scruples  overweigh  his  passion,  and  he  takes  to  a  caprici- 
ous flight.     Mademoiselle  de  Seigny,  who  loves  him. 


M.   Rene  Bazin  269 


will  marry  no  one  else,  and  both  are  horribly  unhappy, 
until  Aunt  Giron,  who  is  the  comic  providence  of  the 
tale,  rides  over  to  the  Baron's  retreat,  and  brings  him 
back,  a  blushing  captive,  to  the  feet  of  the  young  lady. 
All  comes  well,  of  course,  and  the  curtain  falls  to  the 
sound  of  wedding  bells,  while  Aunt  Giron,  brushing 
away  a  tear,  exclaims,  "  La  joie  des  autres,  comme  cela 
fait  du  bien  !  " 

But  Ma  Tante  Giron  is  really  the  least  bit  too  in- 
genuous for  the  best  of  good  little  girls.  Hence  we  are 
not  surprised  to  find  M.  Bazin's  next  novel  at  the  same 
time  less  provincial  and  less  artless.  It  is  very  rare 
for  a  second  book  to  show  so  remarkable  an  advance 
upon  a  first  as  Une  Tache  d'Encre  does  upon  its  pre- 
decessor. This  is  a  story  which  may  be  recommended 
to  any  reader,  of  whatever  age  or  sex,  who  wishes  for  a 
gay,  good-humoured  and  well-constructed  tale,  in  which 
the  whole  tone  and  temper  shall  be  blameless,  and  in 
which  no  great  strain  shall  be  put  upon  the  intellectual 
attention.  It  is  excellently  carpentered ;  it  is  as  neatly 
turned-out  a  piece  of  fiction-furniture  as  any  one  could 
wish  to  see.  It  has,  moreover,  beyond  its  sentimental 
plot,  a  definite  subject.  In  Une  Tache  d'Encre  the 
perennial  hostility  between  Paris  and  the  country- 
town,  particularly  between  Paris  and  the  professional 
countryman,  is  used,  with  excellent  effect,  to  hang  an 
innocent  and  recurrent  humour  upon.  Fabian  Mouillard, 
an  orphan,  has  been  educated  by  an  uncle,  who  is  a 
family  lawyer  at  Bourges.  He  has  been  brought  up 
in  the  veneration  of  the  office,  with  the  fixed  idea  that 
he  must  eventually  carry  on  the  profession,  in  the  same 
place,  among  the  same  chents ;  he  is  a  sort  of  Dauphin 
of  the  basoche,  and  it  has  never  been  suggested  to  him 
that  he  can  escape  from  being  his  uncle's  successor.     But 


2/0  French   Profiles 

Fabian  comes  up  to  Paris,  that  dangerous  city,  hatred 
and  fear  of  which  have  been  most  carefully  instilled 
into  him.  He  still  continues,  however,  to  be  as  good 
as  gold,  when  a  blot  of  ink  changes  the  whole  current 
of  his  life.  He  is  engaged  in  composing  a  thesis  on  the 
Junian  Latins,  a  kind  of  slaves  whose  status  in  ancient 
Rome  offers  curious  difficulties  to  the  student  of  juris- 
prudence. To  inform  himself  of  history  in  this  matter 
he  attends  the  National  Library,  and  there,  one  after- 
noon, he  is  so  unlucky  (or  so  lucky)  as  to  flip  a  drop  of 
ink  by  accident  on  to  a  foHo  which  is  in  process  of  being 
consulted  by  M.  Flamaran,  of  the  Academy  of  Moral  and 
Political  Sciences.  M.  Flamaran  is  a  very  peppery  old 
pedant,  and  he  is  so  angry  that  Fabian  feels  obliged  to 
call  upon  him,  at  his  private  house,  with  a  further 
apology.  The  fond  reader  will  be  prepared  to  learn  that 
M.  Flamaran,  who  is  a  widower,  lives  with  a  very  charm- 
ing daughter,  and  that  she  keeps  house  for  him. 

The  course  of  true  love  then  runs  tolerably  smoothly. 
The  virtuous  youth  without  a  profession  timidly  woos 
the  modest  maiden  without  a  mamma,  and  all  would 
go  well  were  it  not  for  the  fierce  old  sohcitor  at  Bourges. 
M.  Flamaran  will  give  his  daughter  if  Fabian  will  live 
in  Paris ;  but  the  uncle  will  accept  no  niece  unless  the 
young  couple  will  settle  in  the  country.  The  eccentric 
violence  of  M.  Mouillard  gives  the  author  occasion  for 
a  plentiful  exercise  of  that  conventional  wit  about 
lawyers  which  never  fails  to  amuse  French  people, 
which  animates  the  farces  of  the  Renaissance,  and 
which  finds  its  locus  classicus  in  the  one  great  comedy  of 
Racine.  There  follows  a  visit  to  Italy,  very  gracefully 
described ;  then  a  visit  to  Bourges,  very  pathetical  and 
proper ;  and,  of  course,  the  end  of  it  all  is  that  the  uncle 
capitulates  in  snuff  and  tears,  and  comes  up  to  Paris 


M.   Rene  Bazin  271 

to  end  his  days  with  Fabian  and  his  admirable  wife. 
A  final  conversation  lifts  the  veil  of  the  future,  and 
we  learn  that  the  tact  and  household  virtues  of  the 
bride  are  to  make  the  whole  of  Fabian's  career  a 
honeymoon. 

The  same  smoothness  of  execution,  the  same  grace 
and  adroitness  of  narrative,  which  render  Une  Tache 
d'Encre  as  pleasant  reading  as  any  one  of  Mr.  W,  E. 
Norris's  best  society  stories,  are  discovered  in  La  Sarcelle 
Bleue,  in  which,  moreover,  the  element  of  humour  is 
not  absent.  As  a  typical  interpreter  of  decent  French 
sentiment,  at  points  where  it  is  markedly  in  contrast 
with  Enghsh  habits  of  thought,  this  is  an  interesting 
and  even  an  instructive  novel.  We  are  introduced,  in 
a  country-house  of  Anjou,  to  an  old  officer,  M.  Guil- 
laume  Maldonne,  and  his  wife,  and  their  young  daughter, 
Therese.  With  these  excellent  people  lives  Robert  de 
Keredol,  an  old  bachelor,  also  a  retired  officer,  the  life- 
long friend  of  Maldonne.  The  latter  is  an  enthusiastic 
ornithologist,  and  keeper  of  the  museum  of  natural 
history  in  the  adjoining  country-town.  His  ambition 
is  to  possess  a  complete  collection  of  the  birds  of  the 
district,  and  the  arrival  of  Robert  de  Keredol  is  due  to 
a  letter  inviting  him  to  come  to  Anjou  and  bring  his 
gun.  He  has  just  been  wounded  in  Africa,  and  the 
invitation  is  opportune.  He  arrives,  and  so  prolongs 
his  visit  that  he  becomes  a  member  of  the  household  : — 

"  Robert  recovered,  and  was  soon  in  a  fit  state  to  go 
out  with  his  friend.  And  then  there  began  for  both  of 
them  the  most  astonishing  and  the  most  fascinating  of 
Odysseys.  Each  felt  something  of  the  old  life  return 
to  him;  adventure,  the  emotion  of  the  chase,  the  need 
to  be  on  the  alert,  shots  that  hit  or  missed,  distant 
excursions,    nights    beneath    the    stars.    All    private 


272  French   Profiles 

estates,  princely  domains,  closed  parks,  opened  their 
gates  to  these  hunters  of  a  new  type.  What  mattered 
it  to  the  proprietor  most  jealous  of  his  rights  if  a  rare 
woodpecker  or  butcher-bird  was  slaughtered  ?  Wel- 
comed everywhere,  feted  everywhere,  they  ran  from  one 
end  of  the  department  to  the  other,  through  the  copses, 
the  meadows,  the  vineyards,  the  marshlands.  Robert 
did  not  shoot,  but  he  had  an  extraordinary  gift  for 
divining  that  a  bird  had  passed,  for  discovering  its  traces 
or  its  nest,  for  saying  casually,  '  Guillaume,  I  feel  that 
there  are  woodcock  in  the  thickets  under  that  clump  of 
birches;  the  mist  is  violet,  there  is  an  odour  of  dead 
leaves  about  it.'  Or,  when  the  silver  Spring,  along  the 
edges  of  the  Loire,  wakens  all  the  little  world  of  clustered 
buds,  he  was  wonderful  in  perceiving,  motionless  on  a 
point  of  the  shore,  a  ruff  with  bristling  plumage,  or  even, 
posed  between  two  alder  catkins,  the  almost  imperceptible 
blue  linnet." 

It  follows  that  this  novel  is  the  romance  of  orni- 
thology, and  in  its  pleasantest  pages  we  follow  the  fugitive 
"  humeur  d'oiseau."  To  the  local  collection  at  last  but 
one  treasure  is  lacking.  The  Blue  Teal  (perhaps  a  re- 
lative of  the  Blue  Linnet)  is  known  to  be  claimed  among 
the  avifauna  of  Anjou,  but  Maldonne  and  Keredol  can 
never  come  within  earshot  of  a  specimen.  Such  is  the 
state  of  affairs  when  the  book  opens.  Without  per- 
ceiving the  fact,  the  exquisite  child  Therese  Maldonne 
has  become  a  woman,  and  Robert  de  Keredol,  who 
thinks  that  his  affection  for  her  is  still  that  of  an  adopted 
uncle,  wakens  to  the  perception  that  he  desires  her  for 
his  wife.  Docile  in  her  inexperience  and  in  her  maidenly 
reserve,  Therese  accustoms  her  mind  to  this  idea,  but  at 
the  deathbed  of  a  village  child,  her  protege,  she  meets 
an  ardent  and  virtuous  young  gentleman  of  her  own 


M.  Rene  Bazin  273 

age,  Claude  Revel,  and  there  is  love  almost  at  first  sight 
between  them. 

In  France,  however,  and  especially  in  the  provinces, 
the  advances  of  Cupid  must  be  made  with  extreme 
decorum.  Revel  is  not  acquainted  with  M.  Maldonne, 
and  how  is  he  to  be  introduced  ?  He  is  no  zoologist, 
but  he  hears  of  the  old  collector's  passion  for  rare  birds, 
and  shooting  a  squirrel,  he  presents  himself  with  its 
corpse  at  the  Museum,  He  is  admitted,  indeed,  but  with 
some  scorn;  and  is  instructed,  in  a  high  tone,  that  a 
squirrel  is  not  a  bird,  nor  even  a  rarity.  He  receives 
this  information  with  a  touching  lowliness  of  heart,  and 
expresses  a  thirst  to  know  more.  The  zoologist  pro- 
nounces him  marvellously  ignorant,  indeed,  but  ripe 
for  knowledge,  and  deigns  to  take  an  interest  in  him. 
By  degrees,  as  a  rising  young  ornithologist,  he  is  intro- 
duced into  the  family  circle,  where  Keredol  instantly 
conceives  a  blind  and  rude  jealousy  of  him.  Therese, 
on  the  contrary,  is  charmed,  but  he  gets  no  closer  to  her 
parents.  It  is  explained  to  him  at  last  by  Therese  that 
his  only  chance  is  to  present  himself  as  a  suitor,  with  a 
specimen  of  the  Blue  Teal  in  his  hands.  Then  we  follow 
him  on  cold  mornings,  before  daybreak,  in  a  punt  on  the 
reedy  reaches  of  the  Loire;  and  the  gods  are  good  to 
him,  he  pots  a  teal  of  the  most  cerulean  blueness.  Even 
as  he  brings  it  in,  Keredol,  an  incautious  lago,  snatches 
it  from  him,  and  spoils  it.  But  now  the  scales  fall  from 
everybody's  eyes;  Keredol  writes  a  long  letter  of  fare- 
well, and  disappears,  while  Therese,  after  some  coy 
raptures,  is  ceremoniously  betrothed  to  the  enchanted 
Claude  Revel.  It  is  not  suggested  that  he  goes  out 
any  longer,  searching  for  blue  teal,  of  a  cold  and  misty 
morning.  La  Sarcelle  Bleue  is  a  very  charming  story, 
only  spoiled  a  little,  as  it  seems  to  me,  by  the  unsports- 

T 


274 


French  Profiles 


manlike  violence  of  Robert  de  Keredol's  jealousy,  which 
is  hardly  in  keeping  with  his  reputation  as  a  soldier  and 
a  gentleman. 

As  he  has  advanced  in  experience,  M.  Rene  Bazin  has 
shown  an  increasing  ambition  to  deal  with  larger  problems 
than  are  involved  in  such  innocent  love  intrigues  as  those 
which  we  have  just  briefly  analysed.  But  in  doing  so 
he  has,  with  remarkable  persistency,  refrained  from  any 
realisation  of  what  are  called  the  seamy  sides  of  life. 
In  De  Toute  son  Ante  he  attempted  to  deal  with  the 
aspects  of  class-feeling  in  a  large  provincial  town,  and 
in  doing  so  was  as  cautious  as  Mrs.  Gaskell  or  as  Anthony 
TroUope.  This  story,  indeed,  has  a  very  curious  re- 
semblance in  its  plan  to  a  class  of  novel  familiar  to 
English  readers  of  half  a  century  ago,  and  hardly  known 
outside  England.  One  has  a  difficulty  in  persuading 
oneself  that  it  has  not  been  written  in  direct  rivalry  with 
such  books  as  Mary  Barton  and  John  Halifax,  Gentleman. 
It  is  a  deliberate  effort  to  present  the  struggle  of  in- 
dustrial life,  and  the  contrasts  of  capital  and  labour,  in 
a  light  purely  pathetic  and  sentimental.  To  readers 
who  remember  how  this  class  of  theme  is  usually  treated 
in  France — with  so  much  more  force  and  colour,  per- 
haps, but  with  a  complete  disregard  of  the  illusions  of 
the  heart — the  mere  effort  is  interesting.  In  the  case 
of  De  Toute  son  Ante  the  motive  is  superior  to  the 
execution.  M.  Bazin,  greatly  daring,  does  not  wholly 
succeed.  The  Latin  temper  is  too  strong  for  him,  the 
absence  of  tradition  betrays  him;  in  this  novel,  ably 
constructed  as  it  is,  there  is  a  certain  insipid  tone  of 
sentimentality  such  as  is  common  enough  in  English 
novels  of  the  same  class,  but  such  as  the  best  masters 
amongst  us  have  avoided. 

True  to  his  strenuous  provinciality,  M.  Bazin  does 


M.   Rene  Bazin  275 

not  take  Paris  as  his  scene,  but  Nantes.  That  city  and 
the  lucid  stretches  of  the  vast  Loire,  now  approaching 
the  sea,  offer  subjects  for  a  series  of  accurate  and  pictur- 
esque drop-scenes.  The  plot  of  the  book  itself  centres 
in  a  great  factory,  in  the  ateliers  and  the  usines  of  the  rich 
firm  of  Lemarie,  one  of  the  most  wealthy  and  prosperous 
industrials  of  Nantes.  Here  one  of  the  artisans  is 
Uncle  Eloi,  a  simple  and  honest  labourer  of  the  better 
class,  who  has  made  himself  the  guardian  of  his  orphan 
nephew  and  niece,  Antoine  and  Henriette  Madiot. 
These  two  young  people  are  two  types — the  former  of 
the  idle,  sly,  and  vicious  ne'er-do-well,  the  latter  of  all 
that  is  most  industrious,  high-minded  and  decently 
ambitious.  But  Henriette  is  really  the  illegitimate 
daughter  of  the  proprietor  of  the  works,  M.  Lemarie, 
and  his  son  Victor  is  attracted,  he  knows  not  why,  by 
a  fraternal  instinct,  to  the  admirable  Henriette.  She 
is  loved  by  a  countryman,  the  tall  and  handsome 
ifctienne,  reserved  and  silent.  The  works  in  Nantes 
are  burned  down,  by  the  spite  of  Antoine,  who  has 
turned  anarchist.  Lemarie,  the  selfish  capitalist,  is 
killed  by  a  stroke  of  apoplexy  on  hearing  the  news.  His 
widow,  a  woman  of  deep  rehgion,  gives  the  rest  of  her 
life  to  good  works,  and  is  aided  in  her  distributions  by 
Henriette,  who  finds  so  much  to  do  for  others,  in  the 
accumulation  of  her  labours  for  their  welfare,  that  her 
own  happiness  can  find  no  place,  and  the  silent  Etienne 
goes  back  to  his  country  home  in  his  barge.  De  Toute 
son  Ante  is  ^  well-constructed  book,  full  of  noble  thoughts ; 
and  the  sale  of  some  twenty  large  editions  proves  that  it 
has  appealed  with  success  to  a  wide  public  in  France. 
But  we  are  accustomed  in  England,  the  home  of  sensi- 
bility, to  guard,  with  humour  and  with  a  fear  of  the 
absurd,  against  being  swept  away  on  the  full  tide  of  senti- 


276  French   Profiles 

ment,  and  perhaps  this  sort  of  subject  is  better  treated 
by  a  Teutonic  than  by  a  Latin  mind.  At  all  events, 
De  Toute  son  Ante,  the  most  English  of  M.  Bazin's  novels, 
is  likely  to  be  the  one  least  appreciated  in  England. 

A  very  characteristic  specimen  of  M.  Bazin's  deliberate 
rejection  of  all  the  conventional  spices  with  which  the 
French  love  to  heighten  the  flavour  of  their  fiction,  is 
found  in  the  novel  called  Madame  Corentine,  a  sort  of 
hymn  to  the  glory  of  devoted  and  unruffled  matrimony. 
This  tale  opens  in  the  island  of  Jersey,  where  Madame 
Corentine  L'Hereec  is  discovered  keeping  a  bric-a-brac 
shop  in  St.  Heliers,  in  company  with  her  thirteen-year- 
old  daughter,  Simone.  Madame  L'Hereec  is  living 
separated  from  her  husband,  but  M.  Bazin  would  not 
be  true  to  his  parti  pris  if  he  even  suggested  that  there 
had  been  any  impropriety  of  moral  conduct  on  either 
side.  On  the  contrary,  husband  and  wife  are  excellent 
alike,  only,  unhappily,  there  has  been  a  fatal  incom- 
patibility of  temper,  exacerbated  by  the  husband's 
vixen  mother.  Corentine  was  a  charming  girl  of  Perros 
in  Brittany ;  M.  L'Hereec,  a  citizen  of  the  neighbouring 
town  of  Lannion.  Now  he  remains  in  Lannion,  and  she 
has  taken  refuge  in  Jersey;  no  communication  passes 
between  them.  But  the  child  Simone  longs  to  see  her 
father,  and  she  sends  him  a  written  word  by  a  Breton 
sailor.  Old  Capt.  Guen,  Corentine's  widowed  father, 
writes  to  beg  her  to  come  to  Perros,  where  her  younger 
sister,  Marie  Anne,  has  married  the  skipper  of  a  fishing- 
vessel.  Pressed  by  Simone,  the  mother  consents  to  go, 
although  dreading  the  approach  to  her  husband.  She 
arrives  to  find  her  sister's  husband,  Sulhan,  drowned  at 
sea,  and  the  father  mourns  over  two  daughters,  one  of 
whom  is  a  widow  and  the  other  separated  from  her  man. 
But  Sulhan  comes  back  to  life,  and  through  the  instru- 


J 


M.   Rene  Bazin  277 

mentality  of  little  Simone,  the  L'Hereecs  are  brought 
together,  even  the  wicked  old  mother-in-law  getting  her 
fangs  successively  drawn.  The  curtain  falls  on  a  scene 
of  perfect  happiness,  a  general  "  Bless  ye,  my  children  " 
of  melodrama. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  charming  description  in  this 
book,  both  the  Jersey  and  the  Lannion  and  Perros 
scenes  being  painted  in  delightful  colours.  A  great  part 
of  the  novel  is  occupied  with  the  pathos  of  the  harvest 
of  the  sea,  the  agony  of  Breton  women  who  lose  their 
husbands,  brothers  and  sons  in  the  fisheries.  Here 
M.  Bazin  comes  into  direct  competition  with  a  greater 
magician,  with  Pierre  Loti  in  his  exquisite  and  famous 
Pecheur  d'Islande.  This  is  a  comparison  which  is  in- 
evitably made,  and  it  is  one  which  the  younger  novelist, 
with  all  his  merits,  is  not  strong  enough  to  sustain.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  central  subject  of  the  novel,  the 
development  of  character  in  the  frivolous  and  artless 
but  essentially  good-hearted  Corentine,  is  very  good, 
and  Simone  is  one  of  the  best  of  M.  Bazin's  favourite 
"  girlish  shapes  that  slip  the  bud  in  lines  of  unspoiled 
symmetry."  It  is  not  possible  for  me  to  dwell  here  on 
Les  Noellet,  a  long  novel  about  provincial  society  in  the 
Angevin  district  of  the  Vendee,  nor  on  Humble  Amour, 
a  series  of  six  short  stories,  all  (except  Les  Trots  Peines 
d'un  Rossignol,  a  fantastic  dream  of  Naples)  dealing  with 
Breton  life,  because  I  must  push  on  to  a  consideration 
of  a  much  more  important  work. 

The  most  successful,  and  I  think  the  best,  of  M.  Rene 
Bazin's  books,  is  the  latest.  When  La  Terre  qui  Meurt 
was  published  in  1899,  there  were  not  a  few  critics  who 
said  that  here  at  last  was  a  really  great  novel.  There 
is  no  doubt,  at  all  events,  that  the  noveHst  has  found 
a  subject  worthy  of  the  highest  talent.    That  subject 


278  French   Profiles 

briefly  is  the  draining  of  the  village  by  the  city.  He 
takes,  in  La  Terre  qui  Meurt,  the  agricultural  class,  and 
shows  how  the  towns,  with  their  offices,  cafes,  railway 
stations  and  shops,  are  tempting  it  away  from  the 
farms,  and  how,  under  the  pressure  of  imported  produce, 
the  land  itself,  the  ancient,  free  prerogative  of  France, 
the  inalienable  and  faithful  soil,  is  dying  of  a  slow  disease. 
To  illustrate  this  heroic  and  melancholy  theme,  M.  Bazin 
takes  the  history  of  a  farm  in  that  flat  district  occupying 
the  north-west  of  the  department  of  the  Vendee,  between 
the  sandy  shore  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  low  hills  of  the 
Bocage,  which  is  called  Le  Marais.  This  is  a  curious 
fragment  of  France,  traversed  by  canals,  a  little  Holland 
in  its  endless  horizons,  broken  up  by  marshes  and  pools, 
burned  hard  in  summer,  floated  over  by  icy  fogs  in 
winter,  a  country  which,  from  time  immemorial,  has 
been  proud  of  its  great  farms,  and  where  the  traditions 
of  the  soil  have  been  more  conservative  than  anywhere 
else.  Of  this  tract  of  land,  the  famous  Marais  Vendeen, 
with  its  occasional  hill-town  looking  out  from  a  chalky 
island  over  a  wild  sea  of  corn  and  vines  and  dwarf 
orchards  to  the  veritable  ocean  far  away  in  the  west, 
M.  Bazin  gives  an  enchanting  picture.  It  may  be 
amusing  to  note  that  his  landscape  is  as  exact  as  a 
guide-book,  and  that  Sallertaine,  Challans,  St.  Gilles, 
and  the  rest  are  all  real  places.  If  the  reader  should 
ever  take  the  sea-baths  at  Sables  d'Olonne,  he  may 
drive  northward  and  visit  for  himself  "  la  terre  qui 
mevirt  "  in  all  its  melancholy  beauty. 

The  scene  of  the  novel  is  an  ancient  farm,  called  La 
Fromentiere  (even  this,  by  the  way,  is  almost  a  real 
name,  since  it  is  the  channel  of  Fromentine  which 
divides  all  this  rich  marsh-land  from  the  populous  island 
of  Noirmou tiers).     This  farmstead  and  the  fields  around 


M.   Rene  Bazin  279 

it  have  belonged  from  time  immemorial  to  the  family 
of  Lumineau.  Close  by  there  is  a  chateau,  which  has 
always  been  in  the  possession  of  one  noble  family,  that 
of  the  Marquis  de  la  Fromentiere.  The  aristocrats  at 
the  castle  have  preserved  a  sort  of  feudal  relation  to 
the  farmers,  as  they  to  the  labourers,  the  democratisation 
of  society  in  France  having  but  faintly  extended  to  these 
outlying  provinces.  But  hard  times  have  come.  All 
these  people  live  on  the  land,  and  the  land  can  no  longer 
support  them.  The  land  cannot  adapt  itself  to  new 
methods,  new  traditions ;  it  is  the  most  unaltering  thing 
in  the  world,  and  when  pressure  comes  from  without 
and  from  within,  demanding  new  ideas,  exciting  new 
ambitions,  the  land  can  neither  resist  nor  change,  it 
can  only  die. 

Consequently,  when  La  Terre  qui  Meurt  opens,  the 
Marquis  and  his  family  have  long  ceased  to  inhabit  their 
chateau.  They  have  passed  away  to  Paris,  out  of  sight 
of  the  peasants  who  respected  and  loved  them,  leaving 
the  park  untended  and  the  house  empty.  Toussaint 
Lumineau,  the  farmer,  who  owns  La  Fromentiere,  is  a 
splendid  specimen  of  the  old,  heroic  type  of  French 
farmer,  a  man  patriarchal  in  appearance,  having  in  his 
blood,  scarcely  altered  by  the  passage  of  time,  the  pre- 
judices, the  faiths,  and  the  persistencies  of  his  ancient 
race.  No  one  of  his  progenitors  has  ever  dreamed  of 
leaving  the  land.  The  sons  have  cultivated  it  by  the 
side  of  the  fathers;  the  daughters  have  married  into 
the  families  of  neighbouring  farms,  and  have  borne  sons 
and  daughters  for  the  eternal  service  of  the  soil.  The 
land  was  strong  enough  and  rich  enough;  it  could 
support  them  all.  But  now  the  virtue  has  passed  out 
of  the  land.  It  is  being  killed  by  trains  from  Russia 
and  by  ships  from  America ;  the  phylloxera  has  smitten 


28o  French   Profiles 

its  vineyards,  the  shifting  of  markets  has  disturbed  the 
easy  distribution  of  its  products.  And  the  land  never 
adapts  itself  to  circumstances,  never  takes  a  new  lease 
of  life,  never  "  turns  over  a  new  life."  If  you  trifle 
with  its  ancient,  immutable  conditions,  there  is  but  one 
thing  that  the  land  can  do — it  can  die. 

The  whole  of  La  Terre  qui  Meurt  shows  how,  without 
violence  or  agony,  this  sad  condition  proceeds  at  La 
Fromentiere.  Within  the  memory  of  Toussaint  Lumi- 
neau  the  farm  has  been  prosperous  and  wealthy.  With 
a  wife  of  the  old,  capable  class,  with  three  strong  sons 
and  two  wholesome  daughters,  all  went  well  in  the 
household.  But,  gradually,  one  by  one,  the  props  are 
removed,  and  the  roof  of  his  house  rests  more  and 
more  heavily  on  the  old  man's  own  obstinate  persistence. 
What  will  happen  when  that,  too,  is  removed  ?  For 
the  eldest  son,  a  Hercules,  has  been  lamed  for  life  by 
a  waggon  which  passed  over  his  legs;  the  second  son 
and  the  elder  daughter,  bored  to  extinction  by  the  farm 
life,  steal  away,  the  one  to  a  wretched  post  at  a  railway 
station,  the  other  to  be  servant  in  a  small  restaurant, 
both  infinitely  preferring  the  mean  life  in  a  country 
town  to  the  splendid  solitude  of  the  ancestral  home- 
stead. Toussaint  is  left  with  his  third  son,  Andre,  a 
first-rate  farmer,  and  with  his  younger  daughter, 
Rousille.  In  each  of  these  the  genuine  love  of  the  soil 
survives. 

But  Andre  has  been  a  soldier  in  Africa,  and  has  tasted 
of  the  sweetness  of  the  world.  He  pines  for  society  and 
a  richer  earth,  more  sunlight  and  a  wider  chance ;  and, 
at  length,  with  a  breaking  heart,  not  daring  to  confide 
in  his  proud  old  father,  he,  too,  steals  away,  not  to 
abandon  the  tillage  of  the  earth,  but  to  practise  it  on  a 
far  broader  scale  in  the  fertile  plains  of  the  Argentine. 


M.   Rene  Bazin  281 

The  eldest  son,  the  cripple,  dies,  and  the  old  Toussaint 
is  left,  abandoned  by  all  save  his  younger  daughter,  in 
whom  the  heroic  virtue  of  the  soil  revives,  and  who 
becomes  mistress  of  the  farm  and  the  hope  of  the  future. 
And  happiness  comes  to  her,  for  Jean  Nesmy,  the 
labourer  from  the  Bocage,  whom  her  father  has  despised, 
but  whom  she  has  always  loved,  contrives  to  marry 
Rousille  at  the  end  of  the  story.  But  the  Marquis  is  by 
this  time  completely  ruined,  and  the  estates  are  presently 
to  be  sold.  The  farms,  which  have  been  in  his  family 
for  centuries,  will  pass  into  other  hands.  What  will  be 
the  result  of  this  upon  the  life  at  La  Fromenti^re  ?  That 
remains  to  be  seen;  that  will  be  experienced,  with  all 
else  that  an  economic  revolution  brings  in  its  wake,  by 
the  children  of  Rousille. 

A  field  in  which  M.  Rene  Bazin  has  been  fertile  almost 
from  the  first  has  been  the  publication  in  the  Debats 
and  afterwards  in  book-form,  of  short,  picturesque  studies 
of  foreign  landscape,  manners  and  accomplishment. 
He  began  with  A  I'Aventure,  a  volume  of  sketches  of 
modem  Italian  life,  which  he  expanded  a  few  years  later 
in  Les  Italiens  d'Aujourd'hui.  Perhaps  the  best  of  all 
these  volumes  is  that  called  Sidle,  a  record  of  a  tour 
along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  to  Malta,  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Sicily,  northward  along 
Calabria  and  so  to  Naples.  In  no  book  of  M.  Bazin's 
are  his  lucid,  cheerful  philosophy  and  his  power  of  eager 
observation  more  eminently  illustrated  than  in  Sidle. 
A  tour  which  he  made  in  Spain  during  the  months  of 
September  and  October,  1894,  was  recorded  in  a  volume 
entitled  Terre  d'Espagne.  Of  late  he  has  expended  the 
same  qualities  of  sight  and  style  on  the  country  parts 
of  France,  the  western  portion  of  which  he  knows  with 
the  closest  intimacy.    He  has  collected  these  impres- 


282  French   Profiles 

sions — sketches,  short  tales,  imaginary  conversations — 
in  two  volumes,  En  Province,  1896,  and  Croquis  de  France, 
1899.  In  1898  he  accompanied,  or  rather  pursued,  the 
Emperor  of  Germany  on  his  famous  journey  to  Jerusalem, 
and  we  have  the  result  in  Croquis  d'Orient.  In  short, 
M.  Bazin,  who  has  undertaken  all  these  excursions  in  the 
interests  of  the  great  newspaper  with  which  he  is  identi- 
fied, is  at  the  present  moment  one  of  the  most  active 
hterary  travellers  in  France,  and  his  records  have 
exactly  the  same  discreet,  safe  and  conciliatory  qualities 
which  mark  his  novels.  Wherever  M.  Bazin  is,  and 
whatever  he  writes,  he  is  always  eminently  sage. 

We  return  to  the  point  from  which  we  started.  What- 
ever honours  the  future  may  have  in  store  for  the  author 
of  La  Terre  qui  Meurt,  it  is  not  to  be  believed  that  he 
will  ever  develop  into  an  author  dangerous  to  morals. 
His  stories  and  sketches  might  have  been  read,  had 
chronology  permitted,  by  Mrs.  Barbauld  to  Miss  Hannah 
More.  Mrs.  Chapone,  so  difficult  to  satisfy,  would  have 
rejoiced  to  see  them  in  the  hands  of  those  cloistered 
virgins,  her  long-suffering  daughters.  And  there  is 
not,  to  my  knowledge,  one  other  contemporary  French 
author  of  the  imagination  who  could  endure  that 
stringent  test.  M.  Bazin's  novels  appeal  to  persons 
of  a  distinctly  valetudinarian  moral  digestion.  With 
all  this,  they  are  not  dull,  or  tiresome,  or  priggish.  They 
preach  no  sermon,  except  a  broad  and  wholesome  amia- 
biUty ;  they  are  possessed  by  no  provoking  propaganda 
of  virtue.  Simply,  M.  Bazin  sees  the  beauty  of  domestic 
life  in  France,  is  fascinated  by  the  charm  of  the  national 
gaiety  and  courtesy,  and  does  not  attempt  to  look  below 
the  surface. 

We  may  find  something  to  praise,  as  well  as  perhaps 
something  to  smile  at,  in  this  chaste  and  surprising 


M.   Rene   Bazin  283 

optimism.  In  a  very  old-fashioned  book,  that  nobody 
reads  now,  Alfred  de  Musset's  Confession  d'un  Enfant 
du  Steele,  there  is  a  phrase  which  curiously  prefigures 
the  ordinary  French  novelist  of  to-day  "  Voyez," 
says  the  hero  of  that  work,  "  voyez  comme  ils  parlent 
de  tout :  tou jours  les  termes  les  plus  crus,  les  plus 
grossiers,  les  plus  abjects;  ceux-la  seulement  leur 
paraissent  vrais ;  tout  le  reste  n'est  que  parade,  con- 
vention et  prejuges.  Qu'ils  racontent  une  anecdote, 
qu'ils  rendent  compte  de  ce  qu'ils  ont  eprouve, — tou- 
jours  le  mot  sale  et  physique,  toujours  la  lettre,  tou- 
jours  la  mort."  What  an  exact  prediction;  and  it  is 
to  the  honour  of  M.  Bazin  that  all  the  faults  of  judgment 
and  proportion  which  are  here  so  vigorously  stigmatised 
are  avoided  by  his  pure  and  comfortable  talent. 

1901. 


M.    MAURICE    BARRfiS 


M.    MAURICE    BARRES 

Les  Amiti:6s  Fran9AISes 

It  was  in  1883  that  M.  Maurice  Barres  first  attracted 
attention  with  that  curious  httle  volume,  Taches  d'Encre. 
Since  then  he  has  taken  as  many  forms  as  Proteus ;  he 
has  been  a  lion,  and  then  a  snake,  and  then  a  raging 
fire.  He  has  gone  down  into  the  arena  of  politics,  and 
has  fought  with  beasts  at  Ephesus.  He  made  httle 
impression  upon  the  beasts,  and  they  made  none  on 
him,  so  he  came  up  again.  It  was  once  possible  to 
smile  at  M.  Barres,  with  his  Culte  du  Mot  and  his  odd 
dithyrambics.  It  is  not  only  the  bewildered  Phihstine 
who  does  not  always  know  what  this  truculent  and  yet 
insinuating  prophet  is  precisely  saying.  But,  at  the  worst, 
he  is  saying  something.  M.  Maurice  Barres  is  a  Voice,  and 
one  which  it  is  impossible  to  set  aside.  It  moans  hke  the 
wind,  and  thunders  like  the  sea,  and  warbles  hke  a 
thrush,  but  in  the  intensest  of  its  contradictions,  of  its 
wilful  inconsistencies,  it  is  always  essentially  the  same. 
It  would  be  a  mistake  to  judge  M.  Barres  as  an  artist ; 
he  is  an  oratorical  philosopher,  and  one  whose  influence 
on  young  men  in  France  has  been  very  great  and  is  grow- 
ing. There  have  been  sides  of  his  talent  that  sprang 
directly  from  Taine;  later  on  he  developed  a  curious 
likeness  to  Matthew  Arnold.  But,  unless  one  makes  a 
monstrous  mistake,  M.  Barrte  is  an  unusually  clear 
instance  of  a  genius  in  process  of  growth,  and  one  that 
will  soon  remind  the  dullest  of  us  of  nobody  but  himself. 

287 


288  French   Profiles 

Portions  of  Les  Amities  Frangaises  are  slightly  obscure, 
but  the  darkest  of  them  is  the  title-page.  "  French 
Friendships  "  is  an  odd  ticket  for  a  book  in  which  what 
we  commonly  call  "  friendship  "  is  not  once  mentioned. 
M.  Barres — who  blazoned  that  which  most  of  us  would 
have  timidly  called  "  Notes  of  a  Holiday  Tour  in  Spain  " 
as  Du  Sang,  de  la  Volupte  et  de  la  Mort — has  the  courage 
of  Ruskin  in  his  titles.  The  sub-title  of  the  work  before 
us  is  "  Notes  on  how  a  little  Lorrain  may  acquire  those 
feelings  which  give  value  to  life."  We  begin  to  see  that 
we  have  to  do  with  a  link  in  the  author's  chain  of  books 
on  the  development  of  natural  energy,  and  in  reality 
we  must  go  back  to  a  very  early  work  of  his,  which  his 
admirers  still  remember,  Un  Homme  Libre,  to  find  an 
analogy  to  Les  Amities  Frangaises.  We  are  here  not 
dealing  with  the  friendship  of  Frenchman  with  French- 
man, horizontally,  but  with  what  may,  perpendicularly, 
tend  to  unite  in  sympathy  successive  generations  of  the 
sons  of  France.  The  volume  is  a  treatise  on  education. 
The  author's  own  little  son,  Philippe,  is  six  years  old, 
and  it  is  time  that  he  should  be  trained  in  the  noble, 
ardent,  and  chivalrous  tradition  of  his  country.  Children 
are  little  Davids  who  dance  and  sing  before  the  Ark 
before  they  know  why  the  Ark  is  venerable.  M.  Barres 
seeks  to  grasp  this  tendency,  to  mould  it  into  a  positive 
enchantment,  and  to  make  it  the  central  impulse  of  a 
whole  scheme  of  primary  education. 

Like  De  Quincey,  whom  he  sometimes  resembles  as  a 
writer  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  M.  Maurice  Barres 
suffers  from  a  certain  ignorance  of  the  source  of  his  own 
charm.  His  weakness  is  to  parade  strong  thoughts,  to  be 
for  ever  straining  after  energy.  His  strength  lies  in  his 
deUcious  music,  in  the  originaUty  and  tenderness  of  his 
ideas,  in  the  ardour  and  beauty  of  his  sensibihty.     In 


M.    Maurice    Barres  2B9 

some  of  his  books  the  two  elements  clash  in  a  sort  of 
moral  chaos — exciting  enough  to  the  reader,  but  vain 
and  unsatisfactory ;  as,  for  example,  in  the  puerile  and 
charming  book  called  Le  Jardin  de  Berenice  (1891).  He 
always,  however,  writes  to  express  a  set  of  ideas,  and 
these  it  is  generally  easy  to  follow,  whether  he  chooses 
to  accompany  them  on  the  cymbals  or  on  the  soft  re- 
corder. In  Les  Amities  Frangaises  the  latter  prevails; 
but  there  are  very  harsh  notes  of  the  former.  M.  Barres 
forgets  nothing  and  forgives  nothing.  As  he  walks  with 
PhiUppe  over  the  battle-fields  of  Lorraine  the  black  blood 
stirs  his  pulses.  It  is  not  for  us  foreigners  to  judge  a 
sentiment  so  natural,  yet  we  may  be  forgiven  for  finding 
it  painful.  M.  Barres's  glowing  expressions  of  patriotism 
would  seem  more  comfortable,  to  say  the  least,  if  they 
were  not  presented  to  us  as  the  expression  of  so  bitter  a 
sentiment  of  necessity. 

M.  Maurice  Barres  never  forgets  that  he  is  a  Lorrain, 
born  in  the  heart  of  the  province  which  was  torn  in  half 
in  1870.  From  his  earliest  years  the  little  Philippe 
must  walk  in  the  tradition  of  what  the  soil  of  Lorraine 
means  to  French  boys  and  men.  He  is  taken  up  to  the 
heights  of  Vaudemont  and  made  to  listen  to  the  silence 
which  envelops  his  ancestors.  He  is  taken  to  Domremy 
and  told  about  the  maiden  who  fought  for  France  nearly 
five  hundred  years  ago.  He  is  taken  to  Niederbronn, 
where  a  mass  is  being  said  for  those  who  fell  in  the 
battle  of  Froschweiler.  In  this  way  he  is  trained  to 
adopt  a  solemn  and  enthusiastic  reverence  for  hereditary 
emotions,  his  ductile  intelligence  being  ceaselessly 
occupied  in  contemplating  the  past  history  of  his 
country  in  hymnis  et  canticis.  So  that  we  begin  to  see 
that  by  "  amities  "  the  author  means  traditional  affini- 
ties, not  with  living  persons  mainly,  but  with  the  soil, 
u 


290  French  Profiles 

with  the  dust  in  heroic  tombs,  with  supernatural  legend, 
with  the  absorbing  glory  of  past  time.  A  touch  of 
autobiography,  which  escapes  the  author,  sums  up,  as 
well  as  a  long  treatise  could,  his  personal  position  : — 

"  Cela  m'advint  .  .  .  k  regarder  notre  Lorraine  ou 
j'eus  mon  enfance,  ou  reposent  mes  tombeaux,  ou  je 
voudrais  par  dela  ma  mort  ennoblir  des  ames  un  peu 
serves.  Ailleurs,  je  suis  un  etranger  qui  dit  avec  in- 
certitude quelque  strophe  fragmentaire,  mais,  au  pays 
de  la  Moselle,  je  me  connais  comme  un  geste  du  terroir, 
comme  un  instant  de  son  eternite,  comme  I'un  des 
secrets  que  notre  race,  k  chaque  saison,  laisse  emerger 
en  fleur,  et  si  j'eprouve  assez  d'amour,  c'est  moi  qui 
deviendrai  son  cceur.  Viens  done,  Philippe,  sur  la  vie, 
comme  nous  avons  fait  tous.  Les  plus  sures  amities 
guident  tes  pas  et  sur  tes  yeux  mettent  d'abord  leurs 
douces  mains." 

We  must  all  wish  that  Philippe  may  grow  up  to  be 
everything  that  his  ingenious  father  desires  him  to  be. 
Some  of  us,  alas  !  cannot  hope  to  be  present  at  the 
blossoming  of  this  educational  aloe.  But  M.  Barres 
must  not  be  disappointed  if  the  result  is  not  so  com- 
pletely and  directly  successful  as  he  hopes.  Gifts  such 
as  he  delights  in  have  a  provoking  way  of  skipping  a 
generation,  and,  besides,  as  Alphonse  Karr  wittily  put 
it,  "  Dieu  paie — mais  il  ne  paie  pas  tous  les  samedis." 
Phihppe's  grandson  may  become  a  famous  general, 
or  his  niece  the  mother  of  a  great  philosopher.  In 
any  case,  M.  Maurice  Barres  will  have  done  a  gallant  and 
a  picturesque  thing  in  insisting  upon  the  autochthonal 
virtues  of  the  soil  of  France.  He  sows  his  beautiful, 
winged  words,  and  somewhere  or  other  they  will  find 
their  harvest.  So  it  must  appear,  as  I  suppose,  to 
Frenchmen.     How  a  book  hke  the  Amities  Frangaises 


M.    Maurice    Barres  291 

may  appear  to  us  Englishmen  is,  I  am  afraid,  a  matter 
of  indifference  to  M.  Maurice  Barres.  It  should  not  be 
a  matter  of  indifference  to  us  that  it  contains  pages  of 
transcendental  melody  for  the  hke  of  which  we  have  to 
go  back  to  that  other  nationahstic  utterance,  the  Suspiria 
de  Profundis  of  Thomas  de  Quincey. 
1903. 

Le  Voyage  de  Sparte 

The  position  of  M.  Maurice  Barres  continues  to  be 
unique.  Although  he  has  not  long  passed  his  fortieth 
year,  it  is  quite  certain  that  his  influence  is  the  most 
potent  now  moving  in  the  intellectual  world  of  France. 
In  Paris,  where  the  rivalries  of  the  spirit  are  so  keen, 
and  where  ridicule  and  censure  blow  so  incessantly  upon 
every  bud  which  pushes  higher  than  the  thick  hedge 
of  mediocrity,  M.  Barres  has  contrived  to  expand  and 
flourish,  in  spite  of  vehement  blasts  of  criticism.  There 
is  something  in  him  which  appeals,  with  an  extra- 
ordinary directness,  to  the  instinct  of  those  who  are 
hungry  for  sympathy  and  help.  Men  who  are  ambitious 
and  still  young,  and  not  quite  happy,  simply  cannot 
resist  the  appeal  of  M.  Barres.  Even  those  who  are  no 
longer  young,  who  have  the  misfortune  to  be  a  genera- 
tion older  than  M.  Barres,  are  subjected  to  the  impeUing 
charm  of  his  melancholy,  poignant  fluting.  It  is  fifteen 
years  since  he  pubhshed  Un  Homme  Libre,  a  volume 
which  struck  one  as  grotesque  in  form,  violent  in  expres- 
sion and  paradoxical  in  aim.  Yet  there  was  something 
in  this  thorny  book  by  an  unknown  youth,  some  quality 
of  the  heart,  some  abrupt  manifestation  of  intellectual 
rectitude,  which  overbalanced,  already  and  a  hundred- 
fold, anything  repellent  in  so  new  a  method  of  writing. 

As  M.  Barres  began,  so  has  he  proceeded.     For  many 


292  French   Profiles 

of  us,  the  real  revelation  of  his  genius  came  with  Le 
Jardin  de  Berenice,  that  entrancing  reverie,  so  childish 
and  so  profound,  with  its  babblings  of  the  taciturn  lady 
of  Aigues  Mortes,  and  her  symbolic  donkey,  and  the 
ducks  that  betrayed  their  lowly  birth  in  their  lack  of 
the  elements  of  courtesy.  Humour,  philosophy,  tender- 
ness, irony,  all  were  mingled  to  form  the  obscure  and 
glittering  web  of  that  most  curious  book;  but  no  one 
who  read  it,  if  he  had  any  perception  of  the  heavenly 
signs,  could  doubt  that  its  author  was  a  new  star  in  the 
firmament. 

The  written  work  of  M.  Barres  is  abundant  and  com- 
prehensive. He  has  written  delicious  ironic  pamphlets ; 
he  has  published  six  ideological  novels  and  he  has  given 
us  seven  collections  of  essays,  partly  entertaining,  partly 
didactic,  of  which  Le  Voyage  de  Sparte  is  the  latest. 
His  literary  activity  has  been  great,  and  yet  he  has  not 
confided  too  exclusively  in  literature.  Perhaps  no 
French  author  of  his  generation  has  come  out  of  litera- 
ture into  life  with  so  much  impetuous  curiosity  as  M. 
Maurice  Barres.  He  was  brought  up  among  the  Par- 
nassians, was  taken  by  them  into  their  ivory  city,  and 
heard  the  gates  shut  behind  him,  with  the  world  outside. 
He  was  received,  as  an  ardent  youth,  into  the  passionless 
and  arrogant  intimacy  of  Leconte  de  Lisle  and  of 
Heredia.  But  he  could  not  breathe  within  those  walls, 
and  he  soon  broke  out,  occupying  himself  with  the  very 
thing  that  the  poets  and  scholars  of  his  youth  despised, 
moral  ideas  and  the  relation  of  human  thought  to 
human  conduct. 

The  public  formed  its  earliest  impression  of  M.  Barres 
as  of  a  young  man  peacocking  in  an  extreme  and  laugh- 
able vanity.  His  early  writings  were  unblushingly 
concerned  with  himself  and  he  disdained  to  consider 


M.    Maurice    Barres  293 

whether  this  particular  subject  was  at  present  interesting 
to  his  readers.  Such  titles  as  L'Ennemi  des  Lois,  Sous 
I'CEil  des  Barbares  and  Le  Culte  du  Moi  were  caps  thrown 
with  great  precision  at  the  moon.  Nothing  is  more 
unaccountable  than  the  charm  or  the  disgust  produced 
by  egotism.  Individualities  are  like  odours,  and  some 
repel  as  fantastically  as  others  attract.  M.  Barres's 
is  to  his  readers  as  that  of  nemophila  is  to  cats ;  it  simply 
cannot  be  resisted.  But  he  is  not  one  of  those  egotists 
who  seek  for  nothing  but  a  personal  triumph.  On  the 
contrary,  there  has  been  no  more  curious  example  than 
his  of  an  author  who  has  captured  his  audience  only 
that  he  may  hold  it  under  his  finger  and  thumb.  M. 
Maurice  Barres  has  danced  through  the  villages  wearing 
his  motley  and  shaking  his  bells,  but  merely  that  he 
might  collect  a  stream  of  followers  and  take  them  with 
him  to  church.  He  is  still  the  merriest  of  preachers; 
he  totters  with  laughter,  sometimes,  as  he  mounts  the 
steps  of  his  pulpit,  but  he  makes  no  secret  any  longer 
of  its  being  a  pulpit,  and  his  hearers  now  quite  under- 
stand that  they  have  come  to  him  for  the  salvation  of 
their  souls. 

For  M.  Barres — as  we  may  see  now,  looking  back — 
with  his  exquisite  refinement,  his  delicately-toned 
gradations  of  moral  feeling,  has  never  been,  could  never 
be,  a  vulgar  egotist.  He  has  gradually  come  to  be  the 
most  charming,  but  the  most  serious  teacher  of  his 
day.  He  has  observed  that  the  achievement  of  civic 
liberty  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  not  accomplished 
without  great  sacrifices.  He  sees  life  in  France  im- 
poverished by  the  removal  of  discipline.  He  has  become 
aware  that  the  tumultuous  haste  of  the  present  has  cast 
away  all  manner  of  precious  things  that  were  bequeathed 
to  it  by  the  past.     He  insists  on  the  importance  of 


294  French   Profiles 

t5nng  up  again  the  loose  ends  of  that  cord  which  used  to 
bind  us  to  history,  since  by  forcing  ourselves  from  it 
we  have  cruelly  cut  ourselves  off  from  a  stream  of 
hereditary  energy.  M,  Barres,  in  an  age  which  prides 
itself  upon  the  independence  of  the  living,  has  recalled 
the  youth  of  France  to  the  worship  of  the  dead.  In  all 
these  aspects,  the  work  he  has  done,  and  is  doing,  is 
immense;  with  no  exaggeration,  a  master  of  an  earlier 
generation,  M.  Paul  Bourget,  has  called  him  "  le  plus 
eificace  serviteur,  peut-etre,  a  I'heure  presente,  de  la 
France  eternelle."  And  if  the  lesson  of  M.  Maurice 
Barres  is  pre-eminently  addressed  to  France,  there  are 
numberless  aspects  in  which  it  may  be  a  message,  in 
these  times  of  crisis,  to  England  also. 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  processes  of  M. 
Barres's  mind  will  know  what  to  expect  in  Le  Voyage 
de  Sparte,  and  they  will  not  be  disappointed.  As  a 
traveller,  M.  Maurice  Barres  is  a  little  less  circum- 
stantial than  Stevenson,  perhaps  a  little  more  than 
Sterne.  The  chapter  entitled  "  Je  quitte  Mycenes " 
irresistibly  reminds  one  of  a  page  in  Tristram  Shandy. 
"  '  Where,'  continued  my  father,  '  is  Mytilene  ?  What 
is  become,  brother  Toby,  of  Cyzicum  and  Mytilene  ?  '  " 
What,  indeed  !  And  the  reflection  of  the  French  tourist 
mainly  resolves  itself  into  this  Shandean  formula  :  "It 
was  great  fun  for  Schliemann,  no  doubt,  to  discover  the 
seventeen  splendid  corpses,  but  what  do  /  get  ?  It  is 
the  truffle-dog  that  carries  off  the  truffle."  The  Argive 
tombs  were  empty,  and  all  that  M.  Barres  carried  away 
from  Tiryns  was  rather  less  emotion  than  the  bones  of 
an  ichthyosaurus  would  have  given  him.  The  aim  of 
Le  Voyage  de  Sparte  is  to  distinguish  between  true  and 
false  enthusiasm,  to  define  exactly  what  the  emotion  is 
which  the  ruins  of  Greek  civilisation  inspire.     Clear  your 


M.    Maurice  Barres  295 

minds  of  cant,  this  preacher  says,  and  enter  the  great, 
rough  Albanian  village  which  is  Athens,  with  an  honest 
imagination,  M.  Barres  piously  sees  the  usual  sights; 
he  visits  the  shrines  with  humility,  but  he  is  intent  on 
a  faithful  analysis  of  his  sensations.  His  object  in 
travelling  is  not  aesthetic.  He  has  not  come  for  the 
landscape ;  he  has  not  come,  as  Leconte  de  Lisle  would 
come,  to  reinstitute  a  supposititious  perfection  of 
plasticity ;  nor  come,  as  Renan  would  come,  to  maintain 
the  divinity  of  Pallas  Athene.  He  has  come,  as  a 
Frenchman  of  Lorraine,  solicitous  for  the  soul  of  his 
race,  to  see  what  benefice  moral  he  can  extract  from  this 
remote,  dim  world  of  ancient  beauty.  He  has  come, 
not  to  wash  away  the  prose  of  his  old  life  in  a  vague 
poetic  flow,  but  to  see  how  he  can  enrich  it.  He  has 
come  to  find  out  what  Eleusis  and  Corinth  and  Sparta 
have  to  give  him,  by  means  of  which  he  can  live  a  fuller 
life  on  the  wooded  plains  of  Lorraine;  not  be  a  sort 
of  false  Greek,  but  a  wiser  and  more  wholesome  rural 
Frenchman.  "  Benefice  moral !  "  How  far  those  words, 
in  the  mouth  of  the  most  influential  French  writer 
of  the  day,  take  us  from  the  "  L'Art  pour  I'art  "  cry  of 
five-and-twenty  years  ago  ! 
1906, 


M.   HENRI   DE    RfiGNIER 


M.    HENRI    DE    REGNIER 

Les  Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins 
The  determination  of  the  younger  French  writers 
to  enlarge  and  develop  the  resources  of  their  national 
poetry  is  a  feature  of  to-day,  far  too  persistent  and 
general  to  be  ignored.  Until  a  dozen  years  ago,  the 
severely  artificial  prosody  accepted  in  France  seemed 
to  be  one  of  the  literary  phenomena  of  Europe  the  most 
securely  protected  from  possible  change.  The  earhest 
proposals  and  experiments  in  fresh  directions  were 
laughed  at,  and  often  not  undeservedly.  No  one  outside 
the  fray  can  seriously  admit  that  any  one  of  the  early 
francs-tireurs  of  symbolism  made  a  perfectly  successful 
fight.  But  the  number  of  these  volunteers,  and  their 
eagerness,  and  their  intense  determination  to  try  all 
possible  doors  of  egress  from  their  too  severe  palace  of 
traditional  verse,  do  at  last  impress  the  observer  with 
a  sense  of  the  importance  of  the  instinct  which  drives 
them  to  these  eccentric  manifestations.  Renan  said 
of  the  early  Decadents  that  they  were  a  set  of  babies, 
sucking  their  thumbs.  But  these  people  are  getting 
bald,  and  have  grey  beards,  and  still  they  suck  their 
thumbs.  There  must  be  something  more  in  the  whole 
thing  than  met  the  eye  of  the  philosopher.  When  the 
entire  poetic  youth  of  a  country  such  as  France  is 
observed  raking  the  dust-heaps,  it  is  probable  that 
pearls  are  to  be  discovered. 

It  cannot  but  be  admitted  that  M.  Henri  de  R6gniei 
299 


300  French   Profiles 

has  discovered  a  large  one,  if  it  seems  to  be  a  little 
clouded,  and  perhaps  a  little  flawed.  Indeed,  of  the 
multitude  of  experiment-makers  and  theorists,  he  comes 
nearest  (it  seems  to  me)  to  presenting  a  definitely 
evolved  talent,  lifted  out  of  the  merely  tentative  order. 
He  stands,  at  this  juncture,  half-way  between  the 
Parnassians  and  those  of  the  symbohsts  who  are  least 
violent  in  their  excesses.  If  we  approach  M.  de  Regnier 
from  the  old-fashioned  camp,  his  work  may  seem  be- 
wildering enough,  but  if  we  reach  it  from  the  other  side — 
say,  from  M.  Rene  Ghil  or  from  M.  Yvanho6  Rambosson 
—it  appears  to  be  quite  organic  and  intelligible.  Here 
at  least  is  a  writer  with  something  audible  to  communi- 
cate, with  a  coherent  manner  of  saying  it,  and  with  a 
definite  style,  A  year  or  two  ago,  the  publication  of  his 
Poemes  Anciens  et  Romanesques  raised  M.  de  Regnier, 
to  my  mind,  a  head  and  shoulders  above  his  fellows. 
That  impression  is  certainly  strengthened  by  Les  Jeux 
Rustiques  et  Divins,  a  volume  full  of  graceful  and  beauti- 
ful verses.  Alone,  among  the  multitude  of  young 
experimenters,  M.  de  Regnier  seems  to  possess  the 
classical  spirit;  he  is  a  genuine  artist,  of  pure  and 
strenuous  vision.  For  years  and  years,  my  eloquent 
and  mysterious  friend,  M.  Stephane  Mallarme,  has  been 
talking  about  verse  to  the  youth  of  Paris.  The  main 
result  of  all  those  abstruse  discourses  has  been  (so  it 
seems  to  me)  the  production  of  M.  Henri  de  Regnier. 
He  is  the  solitary  swallow  that  makes  the  summer  for 
which  M.  Mallarme  has  been  so  passionately  imploring 
the  gods. 

M.  Henri  de  Regnier  was  bom  at  Honfleur  in  1864, 
and  about  1885  became  dimly  perceptible  to  the  enthu- 
siastic by  his  contributions  to  those  little  revues,  self- 
sacrificing  tributes  to  the  Muses,  which  have  formed 


M.   Henri  de    Regnier  30I 

such  a  pathetic  and  yet  such  an  encouraging  feature  of 
recent  French  hterature.  He  collected  these  scattered 
verses  in  tiny  and  semi-private  pamphlets  of  poetry,  but 
it  was  not  until  1894  that  he  began  to  attract  general 
attention  and  that  opposition  which  is  the  compliment 
time  pays  to  strength.  It  was  in  that  year  that  M.  de 
Regnier  published  Arethuse,  in  which  were  discovered 
such  poems  as  Peroraison  : — 

"  O  lac  pur,  j'ai  jete  mes  flutes  dans  tes  eaux, 
Que  quelque  autre,  a  son  tour,  les  retrouve,  roseaux, 
Sur  le  bord  pastoral  ou  leurs  tiges  sont  nees 
Et  vertes  dans  I'Avril  d'une  plus  belle  Annee  ! 
Que  toute  la  foret  referme  son  automne 
Mysterieux  sur  le  lac  pile  ou  j'abandonne 
Mes  flutes  de  jadis  mortes  au  fond  des  eaux. 
Le  vent  passe  avec  des  feuilles  et  des  oiseaux 
Au-dessus  du  bois  jaune  et  s'en  va  vers  la  Mer; 
Et  je  veux  que  ton  acre  ecume,  6  flot  amer, 
Argente  mes  cheveux  et  fleurisse  ma  joue ; 
Et  je  veux,  debout  dans  I'aurore,  sur  la  proue, 
Saisir  le  vent  qui  vibre  aux  cordes  de  la  lyre, 
Et  voir,  aupr^s  des  Sirenes  qui  les  attirent 
A  I'ecueil  ou  sans  lui  nous  naufragerions, 
Le  Dauphin  serviable  aux  calmes  Arions." 

But  the  vogue  of  his  melancholy  and  metaphysical  poetry, 
with  its  alabastrine  purity,  its  sumptuous  richness,  began 
when  the  poet  finally  addressed  the  world  at  large  in 
two  collections  of  lyrical  verse,  entitled  Po^mes  Anciens 
et  Romanesques  (1896)  and  Les  Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins 
(1897),  when  it  was  admitted,  even  by  those  who  are 
the  most  jealous  guardians  of  the  tradition  in  France, 
that  M.  Henri  de  Regnier  represented  a  power  which 
must  be  taken  for  the  future  into  serious  consideration. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remind  ourselves,  in  reading 
Les  Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins,  of  the  Mallarmean  principle 
that  poetry  should  suggest  and  not  express,  that  a  series 
of  harmonious  hints  should  produce  the  effect  of  direct 


302  French    Profiles 

clear  statement.  In  the  opposite  class,  no  better 
example  can  be  suggested  than  the  sonnets  of  M.  de 
Heredia,  which  are  as  transparent  as  sapphires  or  topazes, 
and  as  hard.  But  if  M.  de  Regnier  treats  the  same  class 
of  subject  as  M.  de  Heredia  (and  he  often  does)  the  result 
is  totally  different.  He  produces  an  opal,  something 
clouded,  soft  in  tone,  and  complex,  made  of  conflicting 
shades  and  fugitive  lights.  In  the  volume  before  us  we 
have  a  long  poem  on  the  subject  of  Arethusa,  the  nymph 
who  haunted  that  Ortygian  well  where,  when  the  flutes 
of  the  shepherds  were  silent,  the  sirens  came  to  quench 
their  thirst.  We  have  been  so  long  habituated,  in 
England  by  the  manner  of  Keats  and  Tennyson,  in 
France  by  the  tradition  of  the  Parnassians,  to  more  or 
less  definite  and  exhaustive  portraiture,  that  at  first 
we  read  this  poetry  of  M.  de  Regnier  without  receiving 
any  impression.  All  the  rhythms  are  melodious,  all 
the  diction  dignified  and  pure,  all  the  images  appropriate, 
but,  until  it  has  been  carefully  re-read,  the  poem  seems 
to  say  nothing.  It  leaves  at  first  no  imprint  on  the 
mind;   it  merely  bewilders  and  taunts  the  attention. 

It  is  difficult  to  find  a  complete  piece  short  enough  for 
quotation  which  shall  yet  do  no  injustice  to  the  methods 
of  M.  de  Regnier ;  but  Invocation  Memoriale  may  serve 
our  purpose  : — 

"  La  main  en  vous  touchant  se  crispe  et  se  contracte 
Aux  veines  de  I'onyx  et  aux  nceuds  de  I'agate, 
Yases  nus  que  I'amour  en  cendre  a  faits  des  urnes  ! 
6  coupes  tristes  que  je  soupese,  une  a  une, 
Sans  sourire  aux  beautes  des  socles  et  des  anses  ! 
()  passe  longuement  ou  je  goute  en  silence 
Des  poisons,  des  memoires  cLcres  ou  le  philtre 
Qu'avec  le  souvenir  encor  I'espoir  infiltre 
Goutte  k  goutte  puise  k  d'amlres  fontaines  ; 
Et,  ne  voyant  que  lui  et  elles  dans  moi-meme, 
Je  regarde,  la-bas,  par  les  fenfitres  hautes, 
L'ombre  d'un  cypres  noir  s'allonger  sur  les  roses." 


M.  Henri  de   Regnier  303 

The  studied  eccentricity  of  the  rhymes  may  be  passed 
over ;  if  fontaines  and  mime,  hautes  and  roses,  satisfy  a 
French  ear,  it  is  no  business  of  an  EngHsh  critic  to 
comment  on  it.  But  the  dimness  of  the  sense  of  this 
poem  is  a  feature  which  we  may  discuss.  At  first 
reading,  perhaps,  we  shall  find  that  the  words  have  left 
no  mark  behind  them  whatever.  Read  them  again  and 
yet  again,  and  a  certain  harmonious  impression  of  liquid 
poetic  beauty  will  disengage  itself,  something  more  in 
keeping  with  the  effect  on  the  mind  of  the  Ode  to  a 
Grecian  Urn,  or  the  close  of  the  Scholar  Gypsy,  than  of 
the  purely  Franco-Hellenic  poetry  of  Andre  Chenier  or 
of  Leconte  de  Lisle.  Throughout  this  volume  what  is 
presented  is  a  faint  tapestry  rather  than  a  picture — dim 
choirs  of  brown  fauns  or  cream-white  nymphs  dancing 
in  faint,  mysterious  forests,  autumnal  foliage  sighing 
over  intangible  stretches  of  winding,  flashing  river ;  Pan 
listening,  the  pale  Sirens  singing,  Autumn  stumbhng  on 
under  the  burden  of  the  Hours,  thyrsus  and  caduceus 
flung  by  unseen  deities  on  the  velvet  of  the  shaven  lawn 
— everywhere  the  shadow  of  poetry,  not  its  substance, 
the  suggestion  of  the  imaginative  act  in  a  state  of  sus- 
pended intelhgence.  Nor  can  beauty  be  denied  to  the 
strange  product,  nor  to  the  poet  his  proud  boast  of  the 
sanction  of  Pegasus  : — 

"  J'ai  vu  le  cheval  rose  ouvrir  ses  ailes  d'or 
Et,  flairant  le  laurier  que  je  tenais  encor, 
Verdoyant  a  jamais  hier  comme  aujourd'hui, 
Se  cabrer  vers  le  Jour  et  ruer  vers  la  Nuit." 


1897. 


La  Cnt  DES  Eaux 


It  may  be  conceded  that  the  publication  of  a  new 
volume  by  M.  Henri  de  Regnier  is,  for  the  moment,  the 


304  French   Profiles 

event  most  looked  forward  to  in  the  poetical  world  of 
France.  The  great  p)oets  of  an  elder  generation,  though 
three  or  four  of  them  survive,  very  rarely  present 
anything  novel  to  their  admirers,  and  of  the  active  and 
numerous  body  of  younger  writers  there  is  no  one, 
certainly  among  those  who  are  purely  French  by  birth, 
whose  work  offers  so  little  to  the  doubter  and  the  de- 
tractor as  that  of  M.  de  Regnier.  He  has  been  before 
the  public  for  sixteen  or  seventeen  years;  his  verse  is 
learned,  copious,  varied,  and  always  distinguished.  Like 
all  the  younger  poets  of  France,  he  has  posed  as  a  revolu- 
tionary, and  has  adopted  a  new  system  of  aesthetics,  and 
in  particular  an  emancipated  prosody.  But  he  has 
carried  his  reforms  to  no  absurd  excess;  he  has  kept 
in  touch  with  the  tradition,  and  he  has  never  demanded 
more  liberty  than  he  required  to  give  ease  to  the  move- 
ments of  his  genius.  By  the  side  of  the  fanatics  of  the 
new  schools  he  has  often  seemed  conservative  and 
sometimes  almost  reactionary.  He  has  always  had  too 
much  to  say  and  too  great  a  joy  in  saying  it  to  be  forever 
fidgeting  about  his  apparatus. 

M.  Henri  de  Regnier  is  much  nearer  in  genius  to  the 
Parnassians  than  any  other  of  his  immediate  contem- 
poraries. If  he  had  been  born  a  quarter  of  a  century 
earlier,  doubtless  he  would  be  a  Parnassian.  In  his 
earliest  verses  he  showed  himself  a  disciple  of  M.  Sully- 
Prudhomme.  But  that  was  a  purely  imitative  strain, 
it  would  seem,  since  in  the  developed  writing  of  M.  de 
Regnier  there  is  none  of  the  intimate  analysis  of  feeling 
and  the  close  philosophic  observation  which  characterise 
the  exquisite  author  of  Les  Vaines  Tendresses.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  M.  de  Heredia  we  have  a  Parnassian  whose 
objective  genius  is  closely  allied,  on  several  sides,  to 
that  of  the  younger  poet.     The  difference  is  largely  one 


M.    Henri   de  Regnier  305 

of  texture;  the  effects  of  M.  de  Heredia  are  metallic, 
those  of  M.  de  Regnier  supple  and  silken.  A  certain 
hardness  of  outline,  which  impairs  for  some  readers  the 
brilliant  enamel  or  bronze  of  Les  Trophees  is  exchanged 
in  Les  Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins  and  Les  Medailles  d'Argile 
for  a  softer  line,  drowned  in  a  more  delicate  atmosphere. 
This  does  not  prevent  M.  de  Heredia  and  M.  de  Regnier 
from  being  the  poets  in  whom  the  old  and  the  new  school 
take  hands,  and  in  whom  the  historical  transition  may 
be  most  advantageously  studied. 

La  Cite  des  Eaux  emphasises  the  conservative  rather 
than  the  revolutionary  tendencies  of  the  writer.  In 
two  closely  related  directions,  indeed,  it  shows  a  reaction 
against  previous  movements  made  by  M.  de  Regnier 
somewhat  to  the  discomfort  of  his  readers.  In  the  poetry 
he  was  writing  five  or  six  years  ago,  he  seemed  to  be 
completely  subdued  by  two  enchanting  but  extremely 
dangerous  sirens  of  style — allegory  and  symbol.  Some 
of  the  numbers  in  Les  Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins  were 
highly  melodious,  indeed,  and  full  of  colour,  but  so 
allusive  and  remote,  so  determined  always  to  indicate 
and  never  to  express,  so  unintelligible,  in  short,  and  so 
vaporous,  that  the  pleasure  of  the  reader  was  very 
seriously  interfered  with.  The  fascinating  and  perilous 
precepts  of  Mallarme  were  here  seen  extravagantly  at 
work.  If  M.  de  Regnier  had  persisted  in  pushing  further 
and  further  along  this  nebulous  path,  we  will  not  venture 
to  say  that  he  would  soon  have  lost  himself,  but  he  would 
most  assuredly  have  begun  to  lose  his  admirers.  We  are 
heartily  glad  that  in  La  Cite  des  Eaux  he  has  seen  fit 
to  return  to  a  country  where  the  air  is  more  lucid,  and 
where  men  are  no  longer  seen  through  the  vitreous  gloom 
as  trees  walking. 

M.  de  Regnier  builds  his  rhyme  with  deep  and  glowing 


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colour.  In  this  he  is  more  hke  Keats  than  any  other 
recent  poet.  Whether  in  the  mysterious  eclogues  of 
antiquity  which  it  used  to  please  him  to  compose,  or 
in  the  simpler  and  clearer  pieces  of  to-day,  he  is  always 
a  follower  of  dreams.  If  the  French  poets  were  dis- 
tinguished by  flowers,  as  their  Greek  predecessors  were, 
the  brows  of  M.  Henri  de  Regnier  might  be  bound  with 
newly-opened  blossoms  of  the  pomegranate,  like  those 
of  Menecrates  in  the  garland  of  Meleager.  His  classical 
pictures  used  to  be  extraordinarily  gorgeous,  like  those 
in  Keat's  Endymion,  purpureal  and  over-ripe,  hanging  in 
glutinous  succession  from  the  sugared  stalk  of  the  rhyme. 
They  are  now  more  strictly  chastened,  but  they  have 
not  lost  their  dreamy  splendour. 

The  desolation  of  the  most  beautiful  of  Royal  gardens 
has  attracted  more  and  more  frequently  of  late  the 
curiosity  of  men  of  imagination.  It  inspired  this  year 
the  fantastic  and  elegant  romance  of  M.  Marcel  Batilliat, 
Versailles-aux-Fantomes.  But  it  has  found  no  more 
exquisite  rendering  than  the  cycle  of  sonnets  which 
gives  its  name  to  the  volume  before  us.  M.  de  Regnier 
wanders  through  the  pavilions  and  across  the  terraces 
of  Versailles,  and  everywhere  he  studies  the  effect  of  its 
mossed  and  melancholy  waters.  He  becomes  hypnotised 
at  last,  and  the  very  enclosures  of  turf  take  the  form  of 
pools  to  his  eyes  : — 

"  Le  gazon  toujours  vert  resscmble  au  bassin  glauque. 
C'est  le  mfime  carre  de  verdure  equivoque, 
Dont  le  marbre  ou  le  buis  encadrent  I'herbe  ou  I'eau  : 
Et  dans  I'eau  smaragdine  et  I'herbe  d'emeraude, 
Regarde,  tour  k  tour,  errer  en  ors  rivaux 
La  jaune  feuille  morte  et  la  cyprin  qui  rode." 

The  vast  and  monumental  garden  stretches  itself  before 
us  in  these  sonnets,  with  its  invariable  alleys  of  cypress 


M.   Henri  de  Regnier  307 

and  box,  its  porcelain  dolphins,  its  roses  floating  across 
the  wasted  marble  of  its  statues,  the  strange  autumnal 
odour  of  its  boscages  and  its  labyrinths,  and,  above  all, 
still  regnant,  the  majestic  and  monotonous  facade  of 
its  incomparable  palace. 

For  English  readers  the  matchless  choruses  of  Empe- 
docles  said  the  final  word  in  poetry  about  Marsyas, 
exactly  fifty  years  ago.  M.  de  Regnier,  who  has  probably' 
never  read  Matthew  Arnold,  has  taken  a  singularly 
parallel  view  of  the  story  in  Le  Sang  de  Marsyas,  where 
the  similarity  is  increased  by  the  fact  that  the  French 
poet  adopts  a  form  of  free  verse  very  closely  analogous 
to  that  used  by  Arnold  in  The  Strayed  Reveller  and  else- 
where. The  spirited  odes,  called  La  Course  and  Pan, 
have  the  same  form  and  something  of  the  same  Amoldian 
dignity.  The  section  entitled  Inscriptions  lues  au  Soir 
Tomhant — especially  those  lines  which  are  dedicated  to 
"  Lc  Ccntaure  Blesse  " — might  have  been  signed,  in  his 
moments  of  most  Hellenic  expansion,  by  Landor.  It 
is  not  an  accident  that  we  are  so  frequently  reminded, 
in  reading  M.  de  Regnier's  poems,  of  the  EngUsh  masters, 
since  he  is  a  prominent  example  of  that  slender  strain 
which  runs  through  French  verse  from  Ronsard  to  Andre 
Chenier,  and  on  through  Alfred  de  Vigny,  where  the 
Greek  spirit  takes  forms  of  expression  which  are  really 
much  more  English  than  Latin  in  their  character.  Of 
the  purely  Ijnrical  section  of  this  charming  volume  it  is 
difficult  to  give  an  impression  without  extensive  quota- 
tion. We  must  confine  ourselves  to  a  single  specimen 
entitled  La  Lune  Jaune  : — 

"  Ce  long  jour  a  fini  par  une  lune  jaune 

Qui  monte  moUement  entre  les  peupliers, 
Tandis  que  se  rcpand  parmi  I'air  qu'elle  embaume 
L'odeur  de  I'eau  qui  dort  entre  les  joncs  mouilles. 


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French   Profiles 


Savions-nous,  quand,  tous  deux,  sous  le  soleil  torride, 
Foulions  la  terre  rouge  et  le  chaume  blessant, 

Savions-nous,  quand  nos  pieds  sur  les  sables  arides 
Laissaient  lours  pas  cmprcints  comme  des  pas  de  sang, 

Savions-nous,  quand  I'amour  briilait  sa  haute  flamme 
En  nos  coeurs  dechires  d'un  tourment  sans  espoir, 

Savions-nous,  quand  mourait  le  feu  dont  nous  brulames, 
Que  sa  cendre  serait  si  douce  a  notre  soir, 

Et  que  cet  apre  jour  qui  s'ach6ve  et  qu'embaume 
Une  odeur  d'eau  qui  songc  entre  les  joncs  mouilles 

Finirait  mollement  par  cette  lune  jaune 

Qui  monte  et  s'arrondit  entre  les  peupliers  ?  " 


1903. 


Les  Vacances  d'un  Jeune  Homme  Sage 

M.  Henri  de  Regnier  is  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
hving  poets  of  France.  But  in  writing  Les  Vacances 
d'un  Jeune  Homme  Sage  he  has  attacked  a  new  province 
of  hterature,  and  has  taken  it  by  storm.  M.  de  Regnier 
has  written  several  novels, — La  Double  Maitresse  and  Le 
Bon  Plaisir  in  particular — which  have  aimed  at  recon- 
structing past  eras  of  society.  These  books  have  been 
remarkable  for  their  ethical  insouciance,  their  rough  and 
cynical  disregard  of  prejudice.  One  has  formed  the 
impression  that  M.  Henri  de  Regnier's  ambition  was  to 
be  a  poet  like  Keats  grafted  upon  a  novelist  like  Smollett. 
And  the  novels,  with  all  their  vigour,  were  not  quite 
what  we  sympathise  with  in  this  country.  Curiously 
enough,  without  giving  us  the  least  warning,  M.  de 
Regnier  has  written,  in  a  mood  of  pure  laughter,  a  refined 
little  picture  of  real  life  in  a  provincial  town  of  to-day. 
He  is  deliciously  sympathetic  at  last. 

A  boy  (I  beg  his  pardon — a  young  man)  of  sixteen, 
Georges  Dolonne,  has  the  misfortune  to  be  plucked  for 
his  bachelor's  degree  at  the  Sorbonne.     This  is  due 


M.   Henri  de   Regnier  309 

partly  to  his  shyness,  and  partly  to  his  pre-occupations, 
for  he  is  very  far  indeed  from  being  stupid.  It  is  rather 
a  serious  check,  however,  but  his  mother  in  her  clemency 
carries  him  away  to  the  country  for  the  holidays,  to  stay 
with  his  great-uncle  and  aunt  at  the  little  town  of 
Rivray-sur-Vince.  The  story  is  simply  a  plain  account 
of  how  Georges  spent  this  vacation,  but  in  the  course  of 
it  every  delightful  eccentricity  of  the  population  of 
Rivray  is  laid  bare.  I  can  imagine  no  pleasanter  figures 
to  spend  a  few  hours  with  than  M.  de  la  Boulerie,  a 
decayed  old  nobleman  with  a  mania  for  heraldry;  or 
comfortable  obese  Madame  de  la  Boulerie,  whose  rich 
Avignon  accent  comes  out  in  moments  of  excitement ; 
or  Mademoiselle  Duplan,  the  drawing-mistress,  who 
wears  a  huge  hat  with  feathers  in  the  depths  of  her  own 
home  and  dashes  out  every  few  moments  to  drive  the 
boys  from  her  espaliers;  or  M.  de  la  Vigneraie,  coarse 
and  subtle,  with  his  loud  voice  and  his  pinchbeck  nobihty 
and  his  domestic  subterfuges. 

Every  one  will  laugh  with  these  inhabitants  of  Rivray- 
sur-Vince,  but  English  readers  must  not  be  a  little 
philosophical  in  order  to  appreciate  young  Master 
Georges.  It  is  not  a  mere  display  of  Podsnappery  to 
find  him  curiously  exotic  to  our  ideas  of  decorous  youth. 
But  we  ought  to  take  a  pleasure  in  him  as  a  psychological 
specimen,  although  so  very  unlike  those  which  flourish 
in  our  own  collections.  There  is  no  cricket,  of  course, 
at  Rivray-sur-Vince,  and  no  base-ball ;  Georges  neither 
rides,  nor  shoots,  nor  even  fishes.  He  smokes  quantities 
of  little  cigarettes,  and  he  takes  walks,  not  too  far  nor 
too  fast,  and  always  on  the  shady  side.  In  fact,  the 
notion  of  physical  exercise  does  not  enter  into  his  head. 
Notwithstanding  this,  Georges  Dolonne  is  not  a  milksop 
or  a  muff ;  he  is  simply  a  young  French  gentleman  in  an 


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immature  condition.  Mentally  he  is  much  more  alert, 
much  more  adroit  and  astute,  than  an  English  boy  in 
his  seventeenth  year  would  be,  and  the  extremely 
amusing  part  of  the  book — that  part,  indeed,  where  it 
rises  to  a  remarkable  originality — is  where  the  contrast 
is  silently  drawn  between  what  his  relations  and  friends 
believe  Georges  to  be  and  insist  upon  his  being,  and  the 
very  wide-awake  young  person  that  he  really  is.  The 
prominent  place  which  the  appearance  and  company  of 
women  take  in  the  interests  of  a  young  Frenchman  at 
an  age  when  the  English  youth  has  scarcely  awakened 
to  the  existence  of  an  ornamental  side  to  sex  is  exempli- 
fied very  acutely,  but  with  a  charming  reserve,  in  Les 
Vacances  d'un  Jeune  Homme  Sage. 

1904. 


FOUR    POETS 


FOUR    POETS 

STEPHANE  MALLARM6 

In  the  midst  of  the  violent  incidents  which  occupied 
pubUc  attention  during  the  month  of  September  1898 
the  passing  of  a  curious  figure  in  the  Uterary  hfe  of 
France  was  almost  unobserved.  St^phane  Mallarm6 
died  on  the  9th  at  his  cottage  of  Bichenic,  near  Vulaine- 
sur-Seine,  after  a  short  illness.  He  was  still  in  the  fullness 
of  life,  having  been  bom  18th  March,  1842,  but  he  had 
long  seemed  fragile.  Five  or  six  years  ago,  and  at  a 
quieter  time,  the  death  of  Mallarm6  would  have  been 
a  newspaper  "  event,"  for  in  the  early  nineties  his 
disciples  managed  to  awaken  around  his  name  and  his 
very  contemplative  person  an  astonishing  amount  of 
curiosity.  This  culminated  in  and  was  partly  assuaged 
by  the  pubhcation  in  1893  of  his  Vers  et  Prose,  with  a 
dreamy  portrait,  a  lithograph  of  great  beauty,  by  Mr. 
Whistler.  Then  Mallarme  had  to  take  his  place  among 
things  seen  and  known ;  his  works  were  no  longer  arcane ; 
people  had  read  Herodiade,  and  their  reason  had  sur- 
vived the  test.  In  France,  where  sensations  pass  so 
quickly,  Mallarme  has  already  long  been  taken  for 
granted. 

It  was  part  of  his  resolute  oddity  to  call  himself  by 
the  sonorous  name  of  Stephane,  but  I  have  been  assured 
that  his  god-parents  gave  him  the  humbler  one  of 
fitienne.     He  was  descended  from  a  series,  uninterrupted 

313 


314  French   Profiles 

both  on  the  father's  and  on  the  mother's  side,  of  officials 
connected  with  the  parochial  and  communal  registers, 
and  Mallarme  was  the  quite-unexpected  flower  of  this 
sober  vegetation.  He  was  to  have  been  a  clerk  himself, 
but  he  escaped  to  England  about  1862,  and  returned  to 
Paris  only  to  become  what  he  remained,  professionally, 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life — a  teacher  of  the  English 
language.  While  he  was  with  us  he  learned  to  cultivate 
a  passion  for  boating ;  and  in  the  very  quiet,  unambitious 
life  of  his  later  years  to  steal  away  to  his  yole  d' acajou 
and  lose  himself,  in  dreaming,  on  one  of  the  tributaries 
of  the  Seine  was  his  favourite,  almost  his  only,  escapade. 
In  1875  he  was  in  London,  and  then  my  acquaintance 
with  him  began.  I  have  a  vision  of  him  now,  the  little, 
brown,  gentle  person,  trotting  about  in  Bloomsbury  with 
an  elephant  folio  under  his  arm,  trying  to  find  Mr. 
Swinburne  by  the  unassisted  light  of  instinct. 

This  famous  folio  contained  Edgar  Poe's  Raven, 
translated  by  Mallarme  and  illustrated  in  the  most 
intimidating  style  by  Manet,  who  was  then  still  an 
acquired  taste.  We  should  to-day  admire  these  illustra- 
tions, no  doubt,  very  much ;  I  am  afraid  that  in  1875, 
in  perfidious  Albion,  they  awakened  among  the  few 
who  saw  them  undying  mirth.  Mallarme's  main  design 
in  those  days  was  to  translate  the  poems  of  Poe,  urged 
to  it,  I  think,  by  a  dictum  of  Baudelaire's,  that  such  a 
translation  "  peut  etre  un  reve  caressant,  mais  ne  pent 
etre  qu'un  reve."  Mallarme  reduced  it  to  reality,  and 
no  one  has  ever  denied  that  his  version  of  Poe's  poems 
{1888)  is  as  admirably  successful  as  it  must  have  been 
difficult  of  performance.  In  1875  the  Parnasse  Contem- 
porain  had  just  rejected  Mallarme's  first  important 
poem,  L'Apres-Midi  d'un  Faune,  and  his  revolt  against 
the  Parnassian  theories  began.     In  1876  he  suddenly 


Stephanc   Mallarme  315 

braved  opinion  by  two  "  couriers  of  the  Decadence," 
one  the  Faune,  in  quarto,  the  other  a  reprint  of  Beck- 
ford's  Vathek,  with  a  preface,  an  octavo  in  vellum. 
Fortunate  the  bibliophil  of  to-day  who  possesses  these 
treasures,  which  were  received  in  Paris  with  nothing  but 
ridicule  and  are  now  sought  after  like  rubies. 

The  longest  and  the  most  celebrated  of  the  poems  of 
M.  Mallarme  is  L'Apres-Midi  d'tm  Faune.  It  appears 
in  the  "  florilege  "  which  he  published  in  1893,  and  I 
have  now  read  it  again,  as  I  have  often  read  it  before. 
To  say  that  I  understand  it  bit  by  bit,  phrase  by  phrase, 
would  be  excessive.  But  if  I  am  asked  whether  this 
famous  miracle  of  unintelligibility  gives  me  pleasure,  I 
answer,  cordially.  Yes.  I  even  fancy  that  I  obtain  from 
it  as  definite  and  as  solid  an  impression  as  M.  Mallarme 
desires  to  produce.  This  is  what  I  read  in  it :  A  faun — 
a  simple,  sensuous,  passionate  being — wakens  in  the 
forest  at  daybreak  and  tries  to  recall  his  experience  of 
the  previous  afternoon.  Was  he  the  fortunate  recipient 
of  an  actual  visit  from  nymphs,  white  and  golden 
goddesses,  divinely  tender  and  indulgent  ?  Or  is  the 
memory  he  seems  to  retain  nothing  but  the  shadow  of 
a  vision,  no  more  substantial  than  the  "  arid  rain  "  of 
notes  from  his  own  flute  ?  He  cannot  tell.  Yet  surely 
there  was,  surely  there  is,  an  animal  whiteness  among 
the  brown  reeds  of  the  lake  that  shines  out  yonder  ? 
Were  they,  are  they,  swans  ?  No !  But  Naiads 
plunging  ?     Perhaps  ! 

Vaguer  and  vaguer  grows  the  impression  of  this 
delicious  experience.  He  would  resign  his  woodland 
godship  to  retain  it.  A  garden  of  lilies,  golden-headed, 
white-stalked,  behind  the  trelhs  of  red  roses  ?  Ah  ! 
the  effort  is  too  great  for  his  poor  brain.  Perhaps  if 
he  selects  one  lily  from  the  garth  of  lilies,  one  beni^ 


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and  beneficent  yielder  of  her  cup  to  thirsty  hps,  the 
memory,  the  ever-receding  memory,  may  be  forced  back. 
So,  when  he  has  glutted  upon  a  bunch  of  grapes,  he  is 
wont  to  toss  the  empty  skins  into  the  air  and  blow  them 
out  in  a  visionary  greediness.  But  no,  the  delicious 
hour  grows  vaguer;  experience  or  dream,  he  will  now 
never  know  which  it  was.  The  sun  is  warm,  the  grasses 
yielding ;  and  he  curls  himself  up  again,  after  worship- 
ping the  efficacious  star  of  wine,  that  he  may  pursue 
the  dubious  ecstasy  into  the  more  hopeful  boskages  of 
sleep. 

This,  then,  is  what  I  read  in  the  so  excessively  obscure 
and  unintelligible  L'Apres-Midi  d'un  Faune ;  and, 
accompanied  as  it  is  with  a  perfect  suavity  of  language 
and  melody  of  rhythm,  I  know  not  what  more  a  poem 
of  eight  pages  could  be  expected  to  give.  It  supplies 
a  simple  and  direct  impression  of  physical  beauty,  of 
harmony,  of  colour;  it  is  exceedingly  mellifluous,  when 
once  the  ear  understands  that  the  poet,  instead  of  being 
the  slave  of  the  alexandrine,  weaves  his  variations  round 
it  like  a  musical  composer.  Unfortunately,  L'Apres-Midi 
was  written  fifteen  years  ago,  and  his  theories  have  grown 
upon  M.  Mallarme  as  his  have  on  Mr.  George  Meredith. 
In  the  new  collection  of  Vers  et  Prose  I  miss  some  pieces 
which  I  used  to  admire — in  particular,  surely.  Placet, 
and  the  delightful  poem  called  Le  Guignon.  Perhaps 
these  were  too  lucid  for  the  worshippers.  In  return,  we 
have  certain  allegories  which  are  terribly  abstruse,  and 
some  subfusc  sonnets.  I  have  read  the  following,  called 
Le  Tomheau  d'Edgard  Poe,  over  and  over  and  over.  I 
am  very  stupid,  but  I  cannot  tell  what  it  says.  In  a 
certain  vague  and  vitreous  way  I  think  I  perceive  what 
it  means  ;  and  we  are  aided  now  by  its  being  punctuated, 
which  was  not  the  case  in  the  original  form  in  which  I 


Stephane   Mallarme  317 

met  with  it.    But,  "  O  my  Brothers,  ye  the  Workers," 
is  it  not  still  a  httle  difficult  ? 

Tel  qu'en  Lui-meme  enfin  reternite  le  chajige, 

Le  Poete  suscite  avec  un  glaive  nu 

Son  sidcle  epouvante  de  n'avoir  pas  connu 
Que  la  mort  triomphait  dans  cette  voix  etrange  I 
Eux,  comme  un  vil  sursaut  d'hydre  oyant  jadis  I'ange 

Donner  un  sens  plus  pur  aux  mots  de  la  tribu 

Proclamerent  tres  haut  le  sortilege  bu 
Dans  le  fiot  sans  honneur  de  quelque  noir  melange. 
Du  sol  et  de  la  nue  hostiles,  6  grief  ! 
Si  notre  id6e  avec  ne  sculpte  un  bas-relief 

Dont  la  tombe  de  Poe  eblouissante  s'ome 
Calme  bloc  ici-bas  chu  d'un  desastre  obscur, 

Que  ce  granit  du  moins  montre  k  jamais  sa  borne 
Aux  noirs  vols  du  Blaspheme  epars  dans  le  futur. 

Of  the  prose  of  M.  Mallarme,  I  can  here  speak  but 
briefly.  He  did  not  pubhsh  very  much  of  it ;  and  it 
is  all  polished  and  cadenced  like  his  verse,  with  strange 
transposed  adjectives  and  exotic  nouns  fantastically 
employed.  It  is  even  more  distinctly  to  be  seen  in  his 
prose  than  in  his  verse  that  he  descends  directly  from 
Baudelaire,  and  in  the  former  that  streak  of  Lamartine 
that  marks  his  poems  is  lacking. 

The  book  called  Pages  can  naturally  be  compared  with 
the  Poemes  en  Prose  of  Baudelaire.  Several  of  the 
sketches  so  named  are  reprinted  in  Vers  et  Prose,  and 
they  strike  me  as  the  most  distinguished  and  satis- 
factory of  the  published  writings  of  M.  Mallarme.  They 
are  difficult,  but  far  more  intelligible  than  the  enigmas 
which  he  calls  his  sonnets.  La  Pipe,  in  which  the  sight 
of  an  old  meerschaum  brings  up  dreams  of  London  and 
the  solitary  lodgings  there ;  Le  Nenuphar  Blanc,  record- 
ing the  vision  of  a  lovely  lady,  visible  for  one  tantalising 
moment  to  a  rower  in  his  boat;  Frisson  d'Hiver,  the 
wholly  fantastic  and  nebulous  reverie  of  archaic  elegances 
evoked  by  the  ticking  of  a  clock  of  Dresden  china ;  each 


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of  these,  and  several  more  of  these  exquisite  Pages,  give 
just  that  impression  of  mystery  and  allusion  which  the 
author  deems  that  style  should  give.  They  are  exquisite 
— so  far  as  they  go — pure,  distinguished,  ingenious ;  and 
the  fantastic  oddity  of  their  vocabulary  seems  in  perfect 
accord  with  their  general  character. 

Here  is  a  fragment  of  La  PenuUieme,  on  which  the 
reader  may  try  his  skill  in  comprehending  the  New 
French  : 

"  Mais  ou  s'installe  I'irrecusable  intervention  du 
surnaturel,  et  le  commencement  de  I'angoisse  sous  la- 
quelle  agonise  mon  esprit  naguere  seigneur,  c'est  quand 
je  vis,  levant  les  yeux,  dans  la  rue  des  antiquaires 
instinctivement  suivie,  que  j'etais  devant  la  boutique 
d'un  luthier  vendeur  de  vieux  instruments  pendus  au 
mur,  et,  a  terre,  des  palmes  jaunes  et  les  ailes  enfouies  en 
I'ombre,  d'oiseaux  anciens.  Je  m'enfuis,  bizarre,  per- 
sonne  condamnee  a  porter  probablement  le  deuil  de 
r inexplicable  Penultieme." 

As  a  translator,  all  the  world  must  commend  i\I. 
Mallarme.  He  has  put  the  poems  of  Poe  into  French 
in  a  way  which  is  subtle  almost  without  parallel.  Each 
version  is  in  simple  prose,  but  so  full,  so  reserved,  so 
suavely  mellifluous,  that  the  metre  and  the  rhymes 
continue  to  sing  in  an  English  ear.  None  could  enter 
more  tenderly  than  he  into  the  strange  charm  of  Ula- 
lunte,  of  The  Sleeper,  or  of  The  Raven.  It  is  rarely 
indeed  that  a  word  suggests  that  the  melody  of  one,  who 
was  a  symbolist  and  a  weaver  of  enigmas  like  himself, 
has  momentarily  evaded  the  translator. 

Extraordinary  persistence  in  an  idea,  and  extra- 
ordinary patience  under  external  discouragement,  these 
were  eminent  characteristics  of  Mallarme.  He  was  not 
understood.     Well,  he  would  wait  a  little  longer.     He 


Stephane    Mallarme  319 

waited,  in  fact,  some  seventeen  years  before  he  admitted 
an  ungrateful  public  again  to  an  examination  of  his 
specimens.  Meanwhile,  in  several  highly  eccentric 
forms,  the  initiated  had  been  allowed  to  buy  Pages 
from  his  works  in  prose  and  verse,  at  high  prices,  in 
most  limited  issues.  Then,  in  1893,  there  was  a  burst 
of  celebrity  and  perhaps  of  disenchantment.  When 
the  tom-toms  and  the  conches  are  silent,  and  the  Veiled 
Prophet  is  revealed  at  last,  there  is  always  some  frivolous 
person  who  is  disappointed  at  the  revelation.  Perhaps 
Mallarme  was  not  quite  so  thrilling  when  his  poems  could 
be  read  by  everybody  as  when  they  could  only  be  gazed 
at  through  the  glass  bookcase  doors  of  wealthy  amateurs. 
But  still,  if  everybody  could  now  read  them,  not  every- 
body could  understand  them.  In  1894  the  amiable 
poet  came  over  here,  and  delivered  at  Oxford  and  at 
Cambridge,  cites  sav antes,  an  address  of  the  densest 
Cimmerian  darkness  on  Music  and  Letters.  In  1897 
appeared  a  collection  of  essays  in  prose,  called  Divaga- 
tions.   The  dictionaries  will  tell  the  rest  of  the  story. 

The  problem  may,  perhaps,  now  be  definitely  stated. 
Language,  to  Mallarme,  was  given  to  conceal  the 
obvious,  to  draw  the  eye,  in  direct  opposition  to  Words- 
worth's axiom,  away  from  the  object.  The  Parnassians 
had  described,  defined,  inexorably  modelled  the  object, 
until  it  stood  before  us  as  in  a  coloured  photograph. 
The  aim  of  Mallarme  was  as  much  as  possible  to  escape 
from  photographic  exactitude.  He  aimed  at  illusion 
only;  he  wrapped  a  mystery  about  his  simplest  utter- 
ance; the  abstruse  and  the  suggestive  are  his  pecuUar 
territory.  His  desire  was  to  use  words  in  such  har- 
monious combinations  as  will  induce  in  the  reader  a 
mood  or  a  condition  which  is  not  mentioned  in  the  text, 
but  was  nevertheless  paramount  in  the  poet's  mind  at 


320  French   Profiles 

the  moment  of  composition.  To  a  conscious  aiming  at 
this  particular  effect  are,  it  appears  to  me,  due  the 
more  curious  characteristics  of  his  style,  and  much  of 
the  utter  bewilderment  which  it  produced  on  the  brain 
of  indolent  readers  debauched  by  the  facilities  of 
realism.^ 

It  seems  quite  impossible  to  conjecture  what  posterity 
will  think  of  the  poetry  of  Stephane  Mallarme.  It  is 
not  of  the  class  which  rebuffs  contemporary  sympathy 
by  its  sentiments  or  its  subjects;  the  difficulty  of 
Mallarme  consists  entirely  in  his  use  of  language.  He 
was  allied  with,  or  was  taken  as  a  master  by,  the  young 
men  who  have  broken  up  and  tried  to  remodel  the 
prosody  of  France.  In  popular  estimation  he  came  to 
be  identified  with  them,  but  in  error ;  there  are  no  vers 
litres  in  Mallarme.  He  was  resolutely  misapprehended, 
and  perhaps,  in  his  quiet  way,  he  courted  misappre- 
hension. But  if  we  examine  very  carefully  in  what  his 
eccentricity  (or  his  originality)  consisted,  we  shall  find 
it  all  resolving  itself  into  a  question  of  language.  He 
thought  that  the  vaunted  precision  and  lucidity  of 
French  style,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  was  degrading 
the  national  literature;  that  poetry  must  preserve,  or 
must  conquer,  an  embroidered  garment  to  distinguish 
her  from  the  daily  newspaper.  He  thought  the  best 
ways  of  doing  this  were,  firstly,  to  divert  the  mind  of 
the  reader  from  the  obvious  and  beaten  paths  of  thought, 
and  secondly,  to  arrange  in  a  decorative  or  melodic 
scheme  words  chosen  or  reverted  to  for  their  pecuhar 
dignity  and  beauty. 

It  was  strange  that  Mallarme  never  saw,  or  never 
chose  to  recognise,  that  he  was  attempting  the  impossible. 

^  See  Appendix,  for  a  letter  from  M.  Mallarme  himself  on  this 
subject. 


Stephane   Mallarme  321 

He  went  on  giving  us  intimations  of  what  he  meant, 
never  the  thing  itself.  His  pubhshed  verses  are  mere 
falUngs  from  him,  vanishings,  blank  misgivings  of  a 
creature  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realised.  They 
are  fragments  of  a  very  singular  and  complicated  system 
which  the  author  never  carried  into  existence.  Mal- 
larme has  left  no  "  works,"  and,  although  he  was  always 
hinting  of  the  Work,  it  was  never  written.  Even  his 
Virgilian  Faune,  even  his  Ovidian  Herodiade,  are  merely 
suggestions  of  the  solid  Latin  splendour  with  which 
he  might  have  carried  out  a  design  he  did  no  more  than 
indicate.  He  was  a  wonderful  dreamer,  exquisite  in 
his  intuitions  and  aspirations,  but  with  as  httle  creative 
power  as  has  ever  been  linked  with  such  shining  con- 
victions. 

What  effect  will  the  hfe  and  death  of  Mallarm6  have 
upon  poetry  in  France  ?  Must  it  not  be  hoped  that  his 
influence  may  prove  rather  temporary  and  transitional 
than  lasting  ?  He  did  excellent  peripatetic  service. 
His  conversation  and  example  preserved  alight,  through 
a  rather  prosy  time,  the  lamp  of  poetic  enthusiasm ;  he 
was  a  glowing  ember.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  who  can 
deny  that  his  theories  and  practice,  ill-comprehended  as 
they  were,  provoked  a  great  display  of  affectation  and 
insincerity  ?  Prose  four  les  Esseintes  is  a  very  curious 
and  interesting  composition ;  but  it  is  not  a  good  model 
for  the  young.  Mallarme  himself,  so  lucid  a  spirit  of  so 
obscure  a  writer,  was  well  aware  of  this.  People,  he 
found,  were  cocksure  of  what  his  poems  meant  when  the 
interpretation  was  only  dawning  upon  himself  after 
a  generation  of  study.  A  youthful  admirer  once  told 
him,  it  is  said,  that  he  entirely  understood  the  meaning 
of  one  of  his  most  cr5^tic  publications.  "  What  a 
genius  you  have  1  "  replied  Mallarme,  with  his  gentle 


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smile;  "  at  the  age  of  twenty  you  have  discovered  in  a 
week  what  has  baffled  me  for  thirty  years." 

Some  of  the  eulogies  on  this  poor,  charming  Mallarme, 
with  his  intense  and  frustrated  aspiration  after  the 
perfect  manner,  have  been  a  cruel  satire  on  his  prestige. 
From  one  of  these  mystifications  I  learn  that  "  with  the 
accustomed  Parian  (flesh  of  death),  Mallarme  associated 
grafts  of  life  unforeseen,  eyes  of  emerald  or  of  sapphire, 
hair  of  gold  or  silver,  smiles  of  ivory,"  and  that  these 
statues  "  failed  to  fidget  on  their  glued-down  feet, 
because  to  the  brutal  chisel  had  succeeded  a  proud  and 
delicate  shiver  gUmmering  through  the  infinite,  percep- 
tible to  the  initiated  alone,  like  the  august  nibbling-away 
of  Beauty  by  a  white  mouse  !  "  So  far  as  Mallarme 
and  his  theories  are  responsible  for  writing  such  as  this — 
and  for  the  last  fifteen  years  his  name  has  been  made 
the  centre  for  a  prodigious  amount  of  the  like  clotted 
nonsense — even  those  who  loved  and  respected  the  man 
most  cannot  sincerely  wish  that  his  influence  should 
continue. 

Mallarme  has  been  employed  as  a  synonym  for 
darkness,  but  he  did  not  choose  this  as  a  distinction. 
He  was  not  like  Donne,  who,  when  Edward  Herbert 
had  been  extremely  crabbed  in  an  elegy  on  Prince 
Henry,  wrote  one  himself  to  "  match,"  as  Ben  Jonson 
tells  us,  Herbert  "  in  obscureness."  In  a  letter  to 
myself,  some  years  ago,  Mallarme  protested  with  evident 
sincerity  against  the  charge  of  being  Lycophrontic : 
"  excepte  par  maladresse  ou  gaucherie  je  ne  suis  pas 
obscur."  Yet  where  is  obscurity  to  be  found  if  not  in 
Don  du  Poeme  ?  What  is  dense  if  the  light  flows  freely 
through  Prose  j>our  des  Esseintes  ?  Some  of  his  altera- 
tions of  his  own  text  betray  the  fact  that  he  treated 
words  as  musical  notation,  that  he  was  far  more  inti- 


Stephane   Mallarme  323 

mately  affected  by  their  euphonic  interrelation  than  by 
their  meaning  in  logical  sequence.  In  my  own  copy  of 
Les  Fenetres,  he  has  altered  in  MS.  the  hne 


"  Que  dore  la  main  chaste  de  I'lnfini  " 


to 


"  Que  dore  le  matin  chaste  de  I'lnfini.' 

Whether  the  Infinite  had  a  Hand  or  a  Morning  was 
purely  a  question  of  euphony.  So,  what  had  long 
appeared  as  "  mon  exotique  soin "  became  "  mon 
unique  soin."  In  short,  Mallarme  used  words,  not  as 
descriptive,  but  as  suggestive  means  of  communication 
between  the  ^vriter  and  the  reader,  and  the  object  of  a 
poem  of  his  was  not  to  define  what  the  poet  was  thinking 
about,  but  to  force  the  listener  to  think  about  it  by 
blocking  up  all  routes  of  impression  save  that  which  led 
to  the  desired  and  indicated  bourne. 

He  was  a  very  delightful  man,  whom  his  friends 
deeply  regret.  He  was  a  particularly  lively  talker,  and 
in  his  conversation,  which  was  marked  by  good  sense  no 
less  than  by  a  singular  delicacy  of  perception,  there  was 
no  trace  of  the  wilful  perversity  of  his  written  style. 
He  had  a  strong  sense  of  humour,  and  no  one  will  ever 
know,  perhaps,  how  far  a  waggish  love  of  mystification 
entered  into  his  theories  and  his  experiments.  He  was 
very  much  amused  when  Verlaine  said  of  him  that  he 
"  considera  la  clarte  comme  une  grace  secondaire."  It 
certainly  was  not  the  grace  he  sought  for  first.  We  may, 
perhaps,  be  permitted  to  think  that  he  had  no  such 
profoundly  novel  view  of  nature  or  of  man  as  justified 
procedures  so  violent  as  those  which  he  introduced.  But, 
when  we  were  able  to  comprehend  him,  we  perceived  an 
exquisite  fancy,  great  refinement  of  feeling  and  an 
attitude  towards  Ufe  which  was  uniformly  and  sensitively 


324  French   Profiles 

poetical.  Is  it  not  to  be  supposed  that  when  he  could 
no  longer  be  understood,  when  we  lost  him  in  the  blaze 
of  language,  he  was  really  more  delightful  than  ever,  if 
only  our  gross  senses  could  have  followed  him  ? 

1893-1898. 

M.  fiMILE  VERHAEREN 

Among  those  poets  who  have  employed  the  French 
tongue  with  most  success  in  recent  years,  it  is  curious 
that  the  two  whose  claims  to  distinction  are  least  open 
to  discussion  should  be,  not  Frenchmen  at  all,  but 
Flemings  of  pure  race.  The  work  of  M.  Verhaeren  has 
not  the  amusing  quality  which  has  given  a  universal 
significance  to  the  dramas  and  treatises  of  M.  Maeter- 
linck, and  he  has  remained  obstinately  faithful  to  the 
less  popular  medium  of  verse.  In  our  English  sense  of 
the  term,  M.  Maeterlinck  is  a  poet  only  upon  occasion, 
while  M.  Verhaeren  never  appears  without  his  singing- 
robes  about  him.  By  dint  of  a  remarkable  persistency 
in  presenting  his  talent  characteristically  to  his  readers, 
M.  Verhaeren  has  risen  slowly  but  steadily  to  a  very 
high  eminence.  He  has  out-lived  the  impression,  which 
prevailed  at  first,  of  ugliness,  of  squalor,  of  a  pre- 
occupation with  themes  and  aspects  radically  anti- 
poetical.  He  has  conquered  us  deliberately,  book  by 
book.  He  has  proved  that  genius  is  its  own  best  judge 
of  what  is  a  good  "  subject,"  and  imperceptibly  we  have 
learned  to  appreciate  and  respect  him.  He  is  true  to 
himself,  quite  indefatigable,  and  we  are  beginning  to 
realise  at  last  that  he  is  one  of  the  very  small  group  of 
really  great  poets  born  in  Europe  since  1850. 

He  has  a  local,  besides  his  universal,  claim  on  our 
respect,  since  he  is  the  pioneer  and  captain  of  the 
briUiant  neo-Belgian  school  which  is  now  so  active  and 


M.  fimile  Verhaeren  325 

so  prominent.  His  first  book  of  verses,  Les  Flamandes, 
of  1883,  is  curious  to  look  back  upon.  It  was  thrust 
upon  a  perfectly  hostile  world  of  Brussels,  a  world  with 
its  eyes  loyally  fixed  on  Paris.  It  had  just  the  same 
harsh,  austere  aspect  which  M.  Verhaeren's  poetry  has 
preserved  ever  since.  It  was  utterly  unlike  what  came 
from  Paris  then,  dear  little  amber-scented  books  of 
polished  sonnets,  bound  in  vellum,  with  Lemerre's 
familiar  piocheur  on  the  cover.  It  was  the  first  shoot 
of  a  new  tree,  of  Franco-Flemish  imaginative  literature. 
M.  Verhaeren  cared  nothing  for  the  neglect  of  the  critics ; 
he  went  on  putting  forth  successive  little  volumes,  no 
less  thorny,  no  less  smelling  of  the  dykes  and  dunes — 
Les  Moines  in  1886,  Les  Soirs  in  1887,  Les  Debacles  in 
1888.  It  was  not  until  1889  that  M.  Maeterlinck  came 
to  his  support  with  a  first  book,  the  Serres  Chandes. 
Meanwhile,  the  genius  of  M.  Verhaeren,  the  product 
of  an  individuality  of  extraordinary  strength,  pressed 
steadily  forward.  He  has  gained  in  suppleness  and 
skill  since  then,  but  all  that  distinguishes  him  from  other 
writers,  all  that  is  himself,  is  to  be  found  in  these  earliest 
pamphlets  of  gaunt,  realistic  poetry. 

The  following  dismal  impression  of  London  is  highly 
characteristic  of  the  early  Verhaeren  of  Les  Soirs : — 

"  Et  ce  Londres  de  fonte  et  de  bronze,  mon  5,me, 
Oii  des  plaques  de  fer  claquent  sous  les  hangars, 

Od  des  voiles  s'en  vont,  sans  Notre  Dame 
Pour  ctoile,  s'en  vont,  li-bas,  vers  les  hasards. 

Gares  de  suies  et  de  fumee,  oh  du  gaz  pleure 

Ses  spleens  d'argent  lointain  vers  des  chemins  d*6clair, 

Ou  des  betes  d'ennui  baillent  k  I'heure, 
Dolente  immensement,  qui  tinte  k  Westminster. 

Et  ces  quais  infinis  de  lanternes  fatales, 

Parques  dont  les  fuseaux  plongent  aux  profondeurs, 

Et  ces  marins  noy6s,  sous  des  p6tales 
De  fleurs  de  boue  oCi  la  flamme  met  des  lueuy s. 


326  French  Profiles 

Et  ces  ch&les  et  ces  gestes  de  femmes  soules, 
Et  ces  alcools  en  lettres  d'or  jusques  au  toit, 

Et  tout  k  coup  la  mort  parmi  ces  foules — 
O  mon  fime  du  soir,  ce  Londres  noir  que  trone  en  toi  1  " 

A  hundred  years  ago  we  possessed  in  English  hterature 
a  writer  very  curiously  parallel  to  M.  Verhaeren,  who 
probably  never  heard  of  him.  I  do  not  know  whether 
any  one  has  pointed  out  the  similarity  between  Crabbe 
and  the  Belgian  poet  of  our  day.  It  is,  however,  very 
striking  when  we  once  come  to  think  of  it,  and  it  em- 
braces subject-matter,  attitude  to  life  and  art,  and  even 
such  closer  matters  as  diction  and  versification.  The 
situation  of  Crabbe,  in  relation  to  the  old  school  of  the 
eighteenth  century  on  the  one  hand  and  to  the  romantic 
school  on  the  other,  is  closely  repeated  by  that  of  M. 
Verhaeren  to  his  elders  and  his  juniors.  If  Byron  were 
now  alive,  he  might  call  M.  Verhaeren  a  Victor  Hugo  in 
worsted  stockings.  There  is  the  same  sardonic  delinea- 
tion of  a  bleak  and  sandy  sea-coast  country,  Suffolk  or 
Zeeland  as  the  case  may  be,  the  same  determination  to 
find  poetic  material  in  the  perfectly  truthful  study  of  a 
raw  peasantry,  of  narrow  provincial  towns,  of  rough  and 
cheerless  seafaring  existences.  In  each  of  these  poets — 
and  scarcely  in  any  other  European  writers  of  verse — 
we  find  the  same  saline  flavour,  the  same  odour  of 
iodine,  the  same  tenacious  attachment  to  the  strength 
and  violence  and  formidable  simplicity  of  nature. 

In  Les  Forces  Tumultueuses  we  discover  the  same 
qualities  which  we  have  found  before  in  M.  Verhaeren's 
volumes.  He  employs  mainly  two  forms  of  verse,  the 
one  a  free  species  of  Alexandrines,  the  other  a  wandering 
measure,  loosely  rhymed,  of  the  sort  which  used  among 
ourselves  to  be  called  "  Pindarique."  He  gives  us 
studies  of  modem  figures,  the  Captain,  the  Tribune,  the 


M.  fimile  Verhaeren  327 

Monk,  the  Banker,  the  Tyrant.  He  gives  us  studies  of 
towns,  curiously  hard,  although  less  violent  than  those 
in  his  eariier,  and  perhaps  most  extraordinary,  book,  Les 
Villes  Tentaculaires.  His  interest  in  towns  and  hamlets 
is  inexhaustible — and  did  not  Crabbe  write  "  The 
Village  "  and  "  The  Borough  "  ?  Even  railway  junctions 
do  not  dismay  the  muse  of  M.  Verhaeren  : — 

"  Oh  !  ces  villes,  par  Tor  putride  envenim6es  ! 
Clameurs  de  pierre  et  vols  et  gestes  de  fum6es, 
Domes  et  tours  d'orgueil  et  colonnes  debout 
Dans  I'espace  qui  vibre  et  le  travail  qui  bout, 
En  aimas-tu  I'effroi  et  les  afires  profondes 
O  toi,  le  voyageur 
Qui  t'en  allais  triste  et  songeur. 
Par  les  gares  de  feu  qui  ceinturent  le  monde  ? 

Cahots  et  bonds  de  trains  par  au-dessus  des  monts  ! 

L'intime  et  sourd  tocsin  qui  enfievrait  ton  ame 

Battait  aussi  dans  ces  villes,  le  soir ;  leur  flamme 

Rouge  et  myriadaire  illuminait  ton  front, 

Leur  aboi  noir,  le  cri,  le  ban  de  ton  coeur  mSme ; 

Ton  etre  entier  etait  tordu  en  leur  blaspheme, 

Ta  volonte  jetee  en  proie  k  leur  torrent 

Et  vous  vous  maudissiez  tout  en  vous  adorant." 

The  superficially  prosaic  has  no  terrors  for  M.  Ver- 
haeren. He  gives  us,  too,  of  course,  studies  of  the  sea- 
coast,  of  that  dreary  district  (it  can  never  have  dreamed 
that  it  would  nourish  a  poet)  which  stretches  from 
Antwerp  westward  along  the  Scheldt  to  the  North  Sea, 
that  infinite  roll  of  dunes,  hung  between  the  convulsive 
surf  and  the  heavy  sky,  over  which  a  bitter  wind  goes 
whistling  through  the  wild  thin  grass  towards  a  vague 
inland  flatness,  vast,  monotonous,  and  dull  beyond  all 
power  of  language  to  describe.  This  is  a  land  which 
arrives  at  relevancy  only  when  darkness  falls  on  it,  and 
its  great  revolving  lights  give  relation  to  its  measureless 
masses. 


328 


French  Profiles 


The  habitual  gloom  and  mournfulness  of  M.  Ver- 
haeren's  pictures  are  only  relieved  once  in  this  powerful 
volume.  The  poem  called  Sur  la  Mer  strikes  a  different 
note,  and  resembles  one  of  those  rare  sunshiny  days  when 
the  creeks  of  Northern  Flanders  are  in  gala.  We  watch 
the  brilliantly-coloured  ship  stirring  her  cordage  and 
fluttering  her  pennons,  like  some  gay  little  Dutch  garden 
putting  merrily  out  to  sea.  All  is  a  bustle  of  scarlet  and 
orange  and  blue;  but  it  would  not  be  a  picture  of  M. 
Verhaeren's  if  it  did  not  offer  a  reverse  side  : — 

"  Le  vaisseau  clair  revint,  un  soir  de  bruit 
Et  de  ffite,  vers  le  rivage, 
D'oii  son  61an  etait  parti ; 
Certes,  les  m&ts  dardaient  toujours  leur  Sme, 
Certes,  le  foe  portait  encore  des  oriflammes, 
Mais  les  marins  etaient  decouronnes 
De  confiance,  et  les  haubans  et  les  cordages 
Ne  vibraient  plus  comme  des  lyres  sauvages. 
Le  navire  rentra  comme  un  jardin  fane, 
Drapeaux  eteints,  espoirs  mines, 
Avec  I'efiroi  de  n'oser  dire  k  ceux  du  port 
Qu'il  avait  entendu,  Ik-bas,  de  plage  en  plage, 
Les  fiots  crier  sur  les  rivages 
Que  Pan  et  que  Jesus,  tous  deux,  6taient  des  morts." 

For  those  who  seek  from  poetry  its  superficial  consola- 
tions, the  canticles  of  M.  Verhaeren  offer  little  attraction. 
But  for  readers  who  can  endure  a  sterner  music,  and  a 
resolute  avoidance  of  the  mere  affectations  of  the 
intellect,  he  is  now  one  of  the  most  interesting  figures 
in  contemporary  literature.  And  to  deny  that  he  is  a 
poet  would  be  like  denying  that  the  great  crimson 
willow-herb  is  a  flower  because  it  grows  in  desolate 
places. 

1902. 


Albert  Samain  329 


ALBERT   SAMAIN 

The  influence  of  Baudelaire,  which  so  gravely  alarmed 
the  critical  sanhedrim  of  forty  years  ago,  has  proved 
more  durable  than  was  expected,  but  at  the  same  time 
singularly  inoffensive.  There  seemed  to  be  something 
in  the  imagination  of  Baudelaire  which  fermented  un- 
pleasantly, and  an  outbreak  of  pestilence  in  his  neigh- 
bourhood was  seriously  apprehended.  He  was  treated 
as  a  sort  of  plague-centre.  It  would  be  difficult  to  make 
the  young  generation  in  London  realise  what  palpita- 
tions, what  tremors,  what  alarms  the  terrible  Fleurs  du 
Mai  caused  in  poetic  bosoms  about  i860.  But  the 
Satanic  dandyism,  as  it  was  called,  of  the  poet's  most 
daring  verses  was  not,  in  reality,  a  very  perdurable 
element.  Most  of  it  was  absurd,  and  some  of  it  was 
vulgar;  all  of  it,  with  the  decease  of  poor  Maurice 
Rollinat,  seems  now  to  have  evaporated.  What  was 
really  powerful  in  Baudelaire,  and  what  his  horrors 
at  first  concealed,  was  the  extreme  intensity  of  his  sense 
of  beauty,  or,  to  be  more  precise,  his  noble  gift  of  sub- 
duing to  the  service  of  poetry  the  voluptuous  visions 
awakened  by  perfume  and  music  and  light. 

It  is  this  side  of  his  genius  which  has  attracted  so 
closely  the  leaders  of  the  poetic  revival  in  France.  A 
lofty,  if  somewhat  vaporous  dignity ;  a  rich,  if  somewhat 
indefinable  severity  of  taste;  these  are  among  the 
prominent  quahties  of  the  new  French  poetry,  which  is 
as  far  removed  in  spirit  from  the  detestable  "  manie 
d'dtonner  "  of  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai  as  it  is  possible  to  be. 
Yet  in  recounting  the  precursors  to  whom  the  homage 
of  the  new  school  is  due,  every  careful  critic  must 
enumerate,  not  only  Lamartine  and  Alfred  de  Vigny, 
but  unquestionably  Baudelaire. 


330  French  Profiles 

In  the  unfortunate  Albert  Samain,  for  instance,  whose 
death  has  deprived  France  prematurely  of  a  nature 
evidently  predestined,  as  few  can  be  said  to  be,  to  the 
splendours  of  poetic  fame,  this  innocuous  and  whole- 
some influence  of  Baudelaire  may  be  very  clearly  traced. 
It  does  not  interfere  with  Samain 's  claim  to  be  treated 
as  an  original  writer  of  high  gifts,  but  it  is  impossible 
to  overlook  its  significance.  The  crawling  corruption 
of  Baudelaire  has,  in  fact,  in  the  course  of  time,  not 
merely  become  deodorised,  but  takes  its  place,  as  a 
pinch  of  "  scentless  and  delicate  dust,"  in  the  inevitable 
composition  of  any  new  French  poet. 

In  the  course  of  the  winter  of  1893,  a  good  many 
persons,  of  whom  the  present  writer  was  one,  received 
a  small  quarto  volume,  bound  in  sage-green  paper,  from 
an  unknown  source  in  Paris.  The  book,  which  was 
privately  printed  in  a  very  small  issue,  was  called  Au 
Jardin  de  I'Infante,  and  it  transpired  that  this  was  the 
first  production  of  a  clerk  in  the  Prefecture  de  la  Seine, 
named  Albert  Samain.  Born  at  Lille  in  1859,  Samain 
was  no  longer  very  young,  but  he  had  no  relations  with 
the  world  of  letters,  and  a  shy  dissatisfaction  with  what 
he  had  written  gave  him  a  dislike  to  publication.  The 
sage-green  volume,  already  so  rare,  was,  as  it  now 
appears,  printed  and  sent  out  by  a  friend,  in  spite  of  the 
poet's  deprecations,  A  copy  of  it  came  into  the  hands 
of  M.  Fran9ois  Coppee,  who,  to  his  great  honour,  in- 
stantly perceived  its  merits,  and  in  the  second  series  of 
Mon  Franc-Parler  attracted  attention  to  it.  In  1897 
an  edition  of  Au  Jardin  de  I'Infante  placed  the  poems 
of  Samain  within  the  range  of  the  ordinary  reader,  and 
in  1898  he  published  another  volume,  Aux  Flancs  du 
Vase.  His  health,  however,  had  failed,  and  he  had  by 
this  time  retired  to  the  country  village  of  Magny-les- 


Albert  Samain  331 


Hameaux,  where  he  died  on  the  i8th  of  August,  1900. 
Since  his  death  there  have  appeared  a  third  volume  of 
poems,  Le  Chariot  d'Or  (1901),  and  a  lyrical  drama, 
PolypMme  {1902). 

The  existence  of  Albert  Samain  left  scarcely  a  ripple 
on  the  stream  of  French  literary  life.  He  stood  apart 
from  all  the  coteries,  and  his  shyness  and  indigence 
prevented  him  from  presenting  himself  where  he  might 
readily  have  been  lionised.  Of  the  very  few  persons 
who  ever  saw  Samain  I  have  interrogated  one  or  two 
as  to  his  appearance  and  manners.  They  tell  me  that 
he  was  pale  and  slight,  with  hollow  cheeks  and  pre- 
ponderating forehead,  and  of  a  great  economy  of  speech. 
Excessively  near-sighted,  he  seemed  to  have  no  cogni- 
sance of  the  world  about  him,  and  the  regularity  of  his 
life  as  a  clerk  emphasised  his  dreamy  habits.  He  is 
described  to  me  as  grave,  and,  when  he  spoke,  somewhat 
grandiloquent;  his  half-shut  eyes  gave  an  impression 
of  languor,  which  was  partly  physical  fatigue.  I  think 
it  possible  that  future  times  may  feel  a  curiosity  about 
the  person  of  Albert  Samain,  and  that  there  will  be 
practically  nothing  to  divulge,  since  his  dreams  died 
with  him.  This  small  city  clerk,  with  his  poor  economies 
and  stricken  health,  habitually  escaped  from  the  oppres- 
sion of  a  life  that  was  as  dull  and  void  as  it  could  be, 
into  the  buoyant  liberty  of  gorgeous  and  persistent 
vision. 

He  expresses  this  himself  in  every  page  ol  Au  Jardin 
de  Vlnfante.    He  says  : — 

"  Les  roses  du  couchant  s'effeuillent  sur  la  fleuve ; 
Et  dans  I'emotion  p41e  du  soir  tombant, 
S'evoque  un  pare  d'automne  oil  rfive  sur  un  banc 
Ma  jeunesse  dejji,  grave  comme  une  veuve;  " 

and  in  a  braver  tone  : — 


332  French   Profiles 

"  Mon  &me  est  une  Infante  en  robe  de  parade, 
Dont  I'exil  se  reflate,  feternel  et  royal, 
Aux  grands  miroirs  deserts  d'un  vieil  Escurial, 
Ainsi  qu'une  galore  oubli6e  en  la  rade." 

Everywhere  the  evidences  of  a  sumptuous  and  en- 
chanted past,  everywhere  the  purity  of  silence  and  the 
radiance  of  royal  waters  at  sunset,  everywhere  the 
incense  of  roses  that  were  planted  for  the  pleasure  of 
queens  long  dead  and  gone,  and  Albert  Samain  pursuing 
his  solitary  way  along  those  deserted  paths  and  up  the 
marble  of  those  crumbling  staircases.  Such  is  the 
illusion  which  animates  the  Garden  of  the  Infanta. 
Sometimes  the  poet  is  not  alone  there;  other  forms 
approach  him,  and  other  faces  smile ;  but  they  are  the 
faces  and  the  forms  of  phantoms  : — 

"  L'&me  d'une  flute  soupire 

Au  fond  du  pare  melodieux ; 
Limpide  est  I'ombre  ou  Ton  respire 
Ton  poeme  silencieux, 

Nuit  de  langueur,  nuit  de  mensonge. 

Qui  poses  d'un  geste  ondoyant 
Dans  ta  chevelure  de  songe 

La  lune,  bijou  d'Orient. 

Sylva,  Sylvie  et  Sylvanire, 

Belles  au  regard  bleu  changeant, 

L'etoile  aux  fontaines  se  mire, 
Allez  par  les  sentiers  d'argent. 

Allez  vite — I'heure  est  si  brdve  ! 

Cueillir  au  jardin  des  aveux 
Les  coeurs  qui  se  meurent  du  reve 

De  mourir  parmi  vos  cheveux." 

His  aim  was  to  express  a  melancholy  and  chaste 
sensuousness  in  terms  of  the  most  tender  and  im- 
passioned symbolism.  No  one  has  succeeded  more 
frequently  than  Samain  in  giving  artistic  form  to  those 


Albert  Samain  333 


vague  and  faint  emotions  which  pass  over  the  soul  Uke  a 
breeze.  He  desired  to  write  verses  when,  as  he  said, 
"  Tame  sent,  exquise,  une  caresse  k  peine,"  or  even — 

"  De  vers  silencieux,  et  sans  rythme  et  sans  trame, 
Ou  la  rime  sans  bruit  glisse  comme  une  rame, — 
De  vers  d'une  ancienne  etoffe  extenuee. 
Impalpable  comme  le  son  et  la  nuee." 

In  this  mood  his  poetry  occasionally  approaches  that 
of  Mr.  Robert  Bridges  on  the  one  side  and  of  Mr.  Yeats 
on  the  other.  It  has  at  other  times  a  certain  marmoreal 
severity  which  reminds  us  of  neither.  I  desire  the 
reader's  close  attention  to  the  following  sonnet,  called 
Cleopatre,  in  which  the  genius  of  Albert  Samain  seems 
to  be  all  revealed.  Here,  it  may  at  first  be  thought,  he 
comes  near  to  the  old  Parnassians ;  but  his  methods  will 
be  found  to  be  diametrically  opposed  to  theirs,  although 
not  even  M.  de  Heredia  would  have  clothed  the  subject 
with  a  nobler  beauty  : — 

"  Accoudee  en  silence  aux  creneaux  de  la  tour. 

La  Reine  aux  cheveux  bleus,  serres  de  bandelettes. 
Sous  I'incantation  trouble  des  cassolettes. 
Sent  monter  dans  son  coeur  ta  mer,  immense  Amour. 

Immobile,  sous  ses  paupieres  violettes, 
Elle  reve,  pamee  aux  fuites  des  coussins; 
Et  les  lourds  colliers  d'or  souleves  par  ses  seins 

Racontent  sa  langueur  et  ses  fievres  muettes. 

Un  adieu  rose  flotte  au  front  des  monuments. 
Le  soir,  veloute  d'ombre,  est  plein  d'enchantements ; 
Et  cependant  qu'au  loin  pleurent  les  crocodiles. 

La  Reine  aux  doigts  crispes,  sanglotante  d'aveux, 
Frissoime  de  sentir,  lascives  et  subtiles, 

Des  mains  qui  dans  le  vent  epuisent  ses  cheveux." 

There  is  much  in  the  history  and  in  the  art  of  Albert 
Samain  which  reminds  me  of  an  English  poet  whom  I 
knew  well  when  we  both  were  young,  and  who  still 


334  French   Profiles 

awaits  the  fullness  of  recognition — Arthur  O'Shaugh- 
nessy.  Each  of  them  was  fascinated  by  the  stronger 
genius  of  two  poets  of  an  older  generation — Baudelaire 
and  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  But  each  had  a  quality  that  was 
entirely  his  own,  a  quality  which  the  passage  of  time 
will  certainly  emphasise  and  isolate. 


1904. 


M.   PAUL   FORT 


The  instinct  which  impels  every  energetic  talent  to 
emancipate  itself  as  far  as  possible  from  the  bondage  of 
tradition  is  a  natural  one,  and  it  is  even  not  so  dangerous 
as  we  suppose.  For,  if  there  is  a  centrifugal  force  ever 
driving  the  ambition  of  youth  away  from  the  conven- 
tional idea  of  beauty,  this  is  easily  reversed  by  the 
inherent  attraction  of  purity  and  nobility  in  form.  The 
artist  makes  a  bold  flight  and  wheels  away  into  the 
distance,  but  he  returns;  he  is  true,  like  Wordsworth's 
skylark,  to  the  kindred  points  of  heaven  and  home.  In 
a  writer,  therefore,  who  starts  in  open  rebellion  to 
the  tradition  of  style,  we  have  but  to  wait  and  see 
whether  the  talent  itself  is  durable.  It  is  only  pre- 
sumptuous Icarus,  whose  waxen  wings  melt  in  the  sun, 
and  who  topples  into  the  sea.  It  is  only  the  writer  who 
makes  eccentricity  the  mantle  to  hide  his  poverty  of 
imagination  and  absence  of  thought  who  disappears. 
To  the  young  man  of  violent  idiosyncrasies  and  genuine 
talent  two  things  always  happen — he  impresses  his 
charm  upon  our  unwilling  senses,  and  he  is  himself 
drawn  back,  unconsciously  and  imperceptibly,  into  the 
main  current  of  the  stream  of  style. 

While  M.  Paul  Fort  was  merely  an  eccentric  experi- 
mentalist, it  did  not  seem  worth  while  to  present  him 


M.   Paul  Fort  335 

to  an  English  audience.  The  earliest  of  his  pubUshed 
volumes,  the  Ballades  Fratigaises  of  1897,  was  a  pure 
mystification  to  most  readers.  It  was  printed,  and 
apparently  written,  as  prose.  It  asserted  the  superiority 
of  rhythm  over  the  artifice  of  prosody,  which  is  precisely 
what  Walt  Whitman  did.  The  French  conceive  poetry, 
however,  very  rigidly  in  its  essential  distinction  from 
prose.  There  are  rules  for  writing  French  verse  which 
are  categorical,  and  these  must  be  taken  en  bloc.  It  is 
far  more  difficult  in  French  to  imagine  a  thing  which 
could  represent,  at  the  same  moment,  poetry  and  prose, 
than  it  would  be  in  EngUsh.  But  M.  Paul  Fort  deter- 
mined to  create  this  entirely  new  thing,  and  when  one 
read  his  effusions  first  it  is  only  fair  to  admit  that  one 
was  bewildered.  Here,  for  instance,  is,  in  its  entirety, 
one  of  the  Ballades  Franqaises  : — 

"  ]&tre  ne  page  et  brave  vielleur  d'amour,  en  la  gentille 
cour  d'un  prince  de  jadis,  chanter  une  princesse  folle- 
ment  aimee,  au  nom  si  doux  que  bruit  de  roses  essaimees, 
a  qui  offrir,  un  jour,  en  lui  off  rant  la  main  pour  la  marche 
a  descendre  avant  le  lac  d'hymen,  I'odorant  coffret  d'or 
sous  ses  chaines  de  lys,  plein  de  bleus  hyalins  es  anneaux 
de  soleil  et  d'oiselets  de  Chypre  ardents  pour  embaumer, 
a  qui  donner  aux  sons  des  fifres  et  des  vielles,  pour  notre 
traversee  en  la  barque  d'hymen,  le  frele  rosier  d'or  k 
tenir  en  sa  main  1  " 

The  only  way  to  make  anything  of  this  is  to  read  it 
aloud,  and  it  may  be  said  in  parenthesis  that  M.  Fort 
is  a  writer  who  appeals  entirely  to  the  ear,  not  to  the  eye. 
Spoken,  or  murmured  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Yeats's 
new  method,  the  piece  of  overladen  prose  disengages 
itself,  floats  out  into  filaments  of  silken  verse,  hke  a 
bunch  of  dry  seaweed  restored  to  its  element.  In  this 
so-called  ballad  the  alexandrine  dominates,  but  with 


336  French   Profiles 

elisions,  assonances,  irregularities  of  every  description. 
It  is  therefore  best  to  allow  the  author  himself  to  define 
his  method.  He  says  in  the  preface  to  a  later  poem,  Le 
Roman  de  Louis  XI. : — 

"  J'ai  cherche  un  style  pouvant  passer,  au  gre  de 
I'emotion,  de  la  prose  au  vers  et  du  vers  a  la  prose  :  la 
prose  rythmee  fournit  la  transition.  Le  vers  suit  les 
elisions  naturelles  du  langage,  II  se  presente  comma 
prose,  toute  gene  d'elision  disparaissant  sous  cette 
forme." 

In  short,  we  have  heard  much  about  "  free  verse  " 
in  France,  but  here  at  last  we  have  an  author  who  has 
had  the  daring  to  consider  prose  and  verse  as  parts  of 
one  graduated  instrument,  and  to  take  the  current 
pronunciation  of  the  French  language  as  the  only  law 
of  a  general  and  normal  rhythm.  It  is  a  curious  experi- 
ment, and  we  shall  have  to  see  what  he  will  ultimately 
make  of  it. 

But  one  is  bound  to  admit  that  he  has  made  a  good 
deal  of  it  already.  He  has  become  an  author  whom  we 
cannot  affect  or  afford  to  ignore.  Born  so  lately  as  1872, 
M.  Paul  Fort  is  in  some  respects  the  most  notable,  as  he 
is  certainly  the  most  abundant,  imaginative  author  of 
his  age  in  France.  The  book  which  lies  before  us,  a 
romance  of  Parisian  life  of  to-day  in  verse,  is  the  sixth 
of  the  volumes  which  M,  Fort  has  brought  out  in  less 
than  six  years,  all  curiously  consistent  in  manner,  all 
independent  of  external  literary  influences,  and  all  full 
of  exuberant,  fresh  and  vivid  impressions  of  nature. 
The  eccentricities  of  his  form  lay  him  open,  of  course, 
to  theoretical  objections  which  I  should  never  think 
unreasonable,  and  which  I  am  conservative  enough  to 
share.  But  these  do  not  affect  his  ardour  in  the  con- 
templation of  nature,  his  high  gust  of  being.     I  scarcely 


M.   Paul  Fort  337 


know  where  to  point  in  any  recent  literature  to  an  author 
so  full  of  the  joy  of  life.  He  does  not  philosophise  or 
analyse,  he  affects  no  airs  of  priest  or  prophet;  his 
attitude  is  extraordinarily  simple,  but  is  charged  with 
the  ecstasy  of  appreciation.  In  two  of  his  collections  of 
lyrics  in  rhythm,  in  particular,  we  find  this  ardour,  this 
enchantment,  predominating;  these  are  Montagne, 
1898,  and  V Amour  Marin,  1900,  in  which  he  sings,  or 
chants,  the  forest  and  the  sea. 

In  Paris  Sentimental  M.  Paul  Fort  has  written  a 
novel  in  his  peculiar  and  favourite  form.  We  have  had 
many  examples  of  the  dangers  and  difficulties  which 
attend  the  specious  adventure  of  writing  modern  fiction 
in  metrical  shape.  Neither  Aurora  Leigh  nor  Lucile 
nor  The  Inn  Album  is  entirely  encouraging  as  more  than 
the  experiment  of  a  capricious  though  splendidly  accom- 
plished artist.  Yet  Paris  Sentimental  is  more  nearly 
related  to  these  than  to  any  French  poem  that  I  happen 
to  recollect.  There  is,  indeed,  as  it  seems  to  me,  some- 
thing English  in  M.  Fort's  habit  of  mind.  His  novel, 
however,  is  much  less  elaborate  than  either  of  the  English 
poems  I  have  mentioned,  and  certainly  much  less 
strenuous  than  the  first  and  third.  It  is  a  chain  of 
lyrical  rhapsodies  in  which  a  very  plain  tale  of  love  and 
disappointment  in  the  Paris  of  to-day  is  made  the  excuse 
for  a  poetical  assimilation  of  all  the  charming  things 
which  Paris  contains,  and  which  have  hitherto  evaded 
the  skill  of  the  poets,  such  as  the  turf  in  the  Square 
Monge,  and  the  colour  of  an  autumn  shower  on  the 
Boulevard  Sebastopol,  and  the  Tziganes  singing  by 
moonUght  at  the  Exposition.  Here  is  an  example  of 
how  it  is  done  : — 

"  Le  couchant  violet  tremble  au  fond  du  jour  rouge. 
Le  Luxembourg  exhale  une  odeur  d'oranger,  et  Manon 
z 


338 


French   Profiles 


s'arrete  k  mon  bras ;  plus  rien  ne  bouge,  les  arbres,  les 
passants,  ce  nuage  6\oign6.  .  .  . 

"  Et  le  jet  d'eau  s'est  tu  :  c'est  la  rosee  qui  chante, 
la-bas,  dans  les  gazons,  ou  rfivent  les  statues,  et  pour 
rendre,  6  sens-tu  ?  la  nuit  plus  ddfaillante,  les  Grangers 
en  fleurs  ont  enivre  la  nue." 

It  would  be  an  easy  exercise  to  search  for  the  metre 
here,  as  we  used  to  hunt  for  blank  verse  in  the  Leaves 
of  Grass.  But  M.  Paul  Fort  is  less  revolutionary  than 
Whitman,  and  more  of  an  artist.  Although  he  clings 
to  his  theories,  in  each  of  his  volumes  he  seems  to  be  less 
negUgent  of  form,  less  provocative,  than  he  was  in  the 
last.  The  force  of  his  talent  is  wheeling  him  back  into 
the  inevitable  tradition ;  he  is  being  forced  by  the  music 
in  his  veins  to  content  himself  with  cadences  that  were 
good  enough  for  Racine  and  Hugo  and  Baudelaire. 
And,  therefore,  in  the  last  quotation  which  I  offer  from 
Paris  Sentimental,  I  take  the  liberty  of  disregarding  the 
typographical  whims  of  the  author,  and  print  his  hnes 
as  verse : — 

"  Par  les  nuits  d'ete  bleues  oii  chantent  les  cigales, 
Dieu  verse  sur  la  France  une  coupe  d'etoiles. 
Le  vent  porte  k  ma  levre  un  gout  du  ciel  d'ete  ! 
Je  veux  boire  a  I'espace  fraichement  argente. 

L'air  du  soir  est  pour  moi  le  bord  de  la  coupe  froide 
Oil,  les  yeux  mi-ferm6s  et  la  bouche  goulue, 

Je  bois,  comme  le  jus  presse  d'une  grenade. 
La  fralcheur  6toilee  qui  se  repand  des  nues. 

Couch6  sur  un  gazon  dont  I'herbe  est  encore  chaude 

De  s'fetre  prelassde  sous  I'haleine  du  jour. 

Oh  !  que  je  viderais,  ce  soir,  avec  amour. 
La  coup>e  immense  bleue  ou  le  firmament  rode  I  " 

1902. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FRANCE 
UPON    ENGLISH    POETRY 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  FRANCE 
UPON    ENGLISH    POETRY 

Address  delivered,  February  g,  1904,  before  the  SociSti  des 
Conferences,  in  Paris. 

Before  I  begin  to  discuss  with  you  the  particular 
subject  of  my  discourse  this  afternoon,  I  cannot  refrain 
from  expressing  my  emotion  at  finding  myself,  in  con- 
sequence of  your  gracious  invitation,  occupying  this 
platform.  It  has  been  said  that,  for  a  man  of  letters, 
consideration  in  a  country  not  his  own  is  a  foretaste 
of  the  verdict  of  posterity.  If  there  be  any  truth  in 
this,  then  surely,  in  the  particular  case  where  that 
country  happens  to  be  France,  it  should  be  more — it 
should  be  something  very  like  a  dangerous  mirage  of 
immortality.  When  the  invitation  of  your  committee 
first  reached  me,  it  seemed  for  a  moment  impossible 
that  I  could  accept  it.  In  no  perfunctory  or  compli- 
mentary sense,  I  shrank,  with  an  apprehension  of  my 
own  twilight,  from  presenting  myself  in  the  midst  of 
your  blaze  of  inteUigence.  How  could  I  be  sure  that 
any  of  my  reflections,  of  my  observations,  could  prove 
worthy  of  acceptance  by  an  audience  accustomed  to 
the  teachings  of  the  most  brilliant  and  the  most  learned 
critics  of  the  world  ?  If  there  be  an  obvious  lack  of 
sufficiency  in  my  words  this  afternoon,  then,  on  your- 
selves must  be  the  blame,  and  on  your  own  generosity, 
since  in  venturing  to  stand  before  you,  it  is  your  com- 

341 


342  French  Profiles 

mands  which  I  obey  in  all  simplicity.  I  obey  them  as 
some  barbarous  Northern  minstrel  might,  who,  finding 
himself  at  the  court  of  PhiHppe  de  Valois,  should  be 
desired,  in  the  presence  of  the  prince  and  of  his  ladies, 
to  exhibit  a  specimen  of  his  rough  native  art. 

The  subject  of  our  inquiry  to-day  is  not  the  nature 
of  the  change  which  occurs  when  a  new  literature  rises 
out  of  the  imitation  of  an  older  one,  as  occurred  with 
such  splendid  results  when  Latin  poetry  was  deliberately 
based  on  Greek  poetry,  in  the  second  century  before 
Christ,  or  when,  in  the  early  Middle  Ages,  the  vernacular 
literatures  of  modern  Europe  sprang  out  of  the  decay 
of  Latin.  In  such  cases  as  these  the  matter  is  simple ; 
out  of  the  old  stock  there  springs  a  new  bud,  affiliated 
to  it,  imitative  and  only  gradually  independent.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  see  Ennius,  in  the  dawn  of  Rome,  sitting 
with  the  Greek  hexameter  before  him,  and  deliberately 
fashioning  a  similar  thing  out  of  the  stubbornness  of 
his  own  rough  tongue.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  some 
student-minstrel  of  the  eleventh  century  debating  within 
himself  whether  he  shall  put  down  his  thoughts  in  faded 
Latin  or  in  the  delicate  lingua  Tusca,  communis  et 
intelligihilis.  Influences  of  this  kind  are  a  part  of  the 
direct  and  natural  evolution  of  literature,  and  their 
phenomena  are  almost  of  a  physical  kind.  When  a 
new  language  breaks  away  from  an  old  language  into 
the  forms  of  a  creative  literature,  its  earhest  manifesta- 
tions must  be  imitative.  It  is  original  in  the  very  fact 
that  it  copies  into  a  new  medium  instead  of  continuing 
in  an  old  one. 

But  the  problem  is  much  more  subtle  and  the  phe- 
nomena more  delicate  and  elusive  when  we  have  to 
deal  with  the  influences  mutually  exercised  on  one 
another  by   contemporary  literatures  of  independent 


French  Influence  343 

character  and  long-settled  traditions.  In  the  case 
before  us,  we  have  one  great  people  building  up  for 
the  expression  of  their  joys  and  passions  a  language  out 
of  Anglo-Saxon  materials,  and  another  great  people 
forging  out  of  low  Latin  a  vehicle  for  their  complicated 
thoughts.  The  literatures  so  created  have  enjoyed  a 
vivid  and  variegated  vitahty  for  century  after  century, 
never  tending  the  one  towards  the  other,  neither  at 
any  time  seriously  taking  a  place  subordinate  to  the 
other,  nor  even  closely  related.  The  image  that  may 
help  to  suggest  to  us  what  it  is  that  we  must  look  for 
in  observing  the  mutual  influences  of  French  and  English 
literature  upon  one  another  is  that  of  two  metallic 
objects,  of  different  colour,  pursuing  a  long  parallel 
fhght  through  space.  We  are  not  to  count  upon  their 
touching  one  another,  or  their  affecting  the  direction 
or  speed  of  either,  but  we  may  expect,  on  occasion,  to 
observe  along  the  burnished  side  of  the  one  a  dash  of 
colour  reflected  from  the  illuminated  surface  of  the 
other. 

It  would  take  us  too  far  from  our  proper  theme  this 
afternoon — a  theme  which  at  best  we  can  but  very 
hurriedly  investigate — ^were  I  to  dwell  on  the  essential 
differences  which  distinguish  the  poetry  of  England  from 
that  of  France.  But  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  these 
differences  make  themselves  most  clearly  felt  exactly 
wherever  the  national  idiosyncrasy  is  most  searchingly 
defined.  The  extraordinary  perfection  of  the  verse  of 
Coleridge  in  its  concentrated  sweetness  and  harmony 
of  vision,  has  never  appealed  to  any  French  student  of 
our  literature.  Perhaps  no  French  ear  could  be  trained 
to  understand  what  the  sovereign  music  of  Coleridge 
means  to  us.  In  hke  manner  it  is  probable  that,  with 
all  our  efforts,  English  criticism  has  never  understood, 


344  French  Profiles 

and  never  will  understand,  what  the  effect  of  the  aston- 
ishing genius  of  Racine  is  upon  the  nerves  and  intelligence 
of  a  Frenchman.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  Mr.  Swinburne  approaches  thought  and  style  from 
a  point  of  view  eminently  appreciable  by  the  French, 
while  France  contains  one  great  poet,  Charles  Baudelaire, 
whose  oddity  of  mental  attitude  and  whose  peculiar 
treatment  of  verse-music  and  of  imagery  are  perhaps 
more  easily  comprehended  by  an  English  reader  than 
by  an  academic  Frenchman. 

A  matter  which  might  be  pursued,  in  connection 
with  this,  but  which  time  forbids  me  to  do  more  than 
indicate,  is  that,  while  in  France  poetry  has  been  accus- 
tomed to  reflect  the  general  tongue  of  the  people,  the 
great  poets  of  England  have  almost  always  had  to 
struggle  against  a  complete  dissonance  between  their 
own  aims  and  interests  and  those  of  the  nation.  The 
result  has  been  that  England,  the  most  inartistic  of 
modem  races,  has  produced  the  largest  number  of 
exquisite  literary  artists. 

The  expression  of  personal  sensation  has  always  been 
dear  to  the  English  poets,  and  we  meet  with  it  in  some 
of  the  earliest  babblings  of  our  tongue.  From  Anglo- 
Saxon  times  onward,  the  British  bard  never  felt  called 
upon  to  express  the  sesthetic  emotions  of  a  society 
around  him,  as  the  Provencal  troubadour  or  Carlo- 
vingian  jongleur  did.  He  was  driven  to  find  inspiration 
in  nature  and  in  himself.  The  mediaeval  conquest  of 
England  by  the  French  language  did  not  modify  this 
state  of  things  in  any  degree.  When  the  French  wave 
ebbed  away  from  us  in  the  fourteenth  century,  it  left 
our  poets  of  pure  English  as  individual,  as  salient,  as 
unrepresentative  as  ever.  What  every  poet  of  delicate 
genius,  whether  he  be  Chaucer  or  Milton,  Gray  or  Keats, 


French  Influence  345 

has  felt  in  the  existing  world  of  England,  has  been  the 
pressure  of  a  lack  of  the  aesthetic  sense.  Our  people 
are  not  naturally  sensitive  to  harmony,  to  proportion, 
to  the  due  relation  of  parts  in  a  work  of  imaginative 
artifice.  But  what  is  very  curious  is  that  our  poets 
have  been  peculiarly  sensitive  to  these  very  qualities, 
and  that  no  finer  or  subtler  artists  in  language  have  risen 
in  any  country  than  precisely  the  poetic  representatives 
of  the  densely  unpoetic  England. 

The  result  of  this  fantastic  and  almost  incessant 
discord  between  our  poets  and  our  people — a  discord 
dissolved  into  harmony  only  at  one  moment  around  the 
genius  of  Shakespeare — the  result  of  this  has  been  to 
make  our  poets,  at  critical  epochs,  sensitive  to  catch 
the  colour  of  literatures  alien  from  their  own.  In  the 
healthier  moments  of  our  poetry  we  have  gained  bright- 
ness by  reflections  from  other  literatures,  from  those  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  from  those  of  Italy  and  Spain  and 
France.  In  moments  when  our  poetry  was  unhealthy 
it  has  borrowed  to  its  immediate  and  certain  disadvantage 
from  these  neighbours.  But  it  will,  I  think,  be  seen 
that  in  the  latter  case  the  borrowing  has  invariably  been 
of  a  coarser  and  more  material  kind,  and  has  consisted 
in  a  more  or  less  vulgar  imitation.  The  evil  effect  of 
this  will,  I  believe,  be  found  to  be  as  definite  as  the 
effect  of  the  higher  and  more  illusive  borrowing  is  bene- 
ficial. For  purposes  of  convenience  I  propose  in  the 
foUowing  remarks  to  distinguish  these  forms  of  influence 
as  consisting  in  colour  and  in  substance. 

A  few  words  may  serve  to  define  what  I  understand 
here  by  "  substance  "  and  by  "  colour."  By  the  first 
of  these  I  wish  to  indicate  those  cases  in  which  influence 
has  taken  a  gross  and  slavish  form,  in  which  there  has 
been  a  more  or  less  complete  resignation  of  the  individu- 


346  French  Profiles 

ality  of  the  literature  influenced.  An  instance  of  this 
is  the  absolute  bondage  of  Spanish  drama  to  French 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  a  play  had  no  chance 
on  the  stage  of  Madrid  unless  it  were  directly  modelled 
on  Racine  or  Voltaire.  We  shall  presently  have  to 
point  to  something  similar  in  the  drama  of  our  own 
Restoration.  These  are  cases  where  an  exhausted 
literature,  in  extreme  decay,  is  kept  alive  by  borrowing 
its  very  body  and  essence  from  a  foreign  source,  the 
result  being  that  such  life  as  it  presents  is  not  really 
its  own,  but  provided  for  it,  ready-made,  by  the  genius 
of  another  country.  This  species  of  influence  I  hold 
to  be  invariably  the  sign  of  a  diseased  and  weakly 
condition. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  precisely  when  the  poets  of 
a  country  desire  to  clothe  in  new  forms  the  personal 
sensations  which  are  driving  them  to  creative  expression, 
that  they  are  very  hkely  to  turn  to  a  neighbouring 
hterature,  which  happens  to  be  at  a  stage  of  zesthetic 
development  different  from  their  own,  for  superficial 
suggestions.  The  ornaments  of  form  which  they  bring 
back  with  them,  when  they  are  in  this  healthy  and  lively 
condition,  are  what  I  describe  as  "  colour."  In  the 
early  history  of  European  poetry,  none  of  the  great 
poetic  powers  disdained  to  import  from  Italy  the  radiance 
and  tincture  of  her  executive  skill.  The  introduction 
of  the  sonnet  to  England  and  to  France,  that  of  blank 
verse  to  England,  that  of  prose  comedy  to  France, 
these  were  instances  of  the  absorption  by  living  and 
vigorous  literatures  of  elements  in  the  literary  art  of 
Italy  which  were  instinctively  felt  by  them  to  be 
strengthening  and  refining,  but  not  subjugating.  In 
these  cases  influence  does  nothing  to  lessen  the  import- 
ance of  that  deUcate  distinction  of  individual  style  which 


French  Influence  347 

is  the  very  charm  of  poetry,  but  rather  gives  that 
distinction  a  more  powerful  apparatus  for  making  its 
presence  felt. 

We  have  a  very  instructive  example  of  this  whole- 
some reflex  action  of  one  literature  upon  another,  in 
the  history  of  the  fourteenth  century.  No  one  will 
pretend  that  France  possessed  at  that  epoch,  or  indeed 
had  ever  yet  possessed,  a  poet  of  very  high  rank,  with 
the  exception  of  the  anonymous  artist  who  bequeathed 
to  us  the  Chanson  de  Roland.  But,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  she  had  produced  that  amazing  work,  Le  Roman 
de  la  Rose,  half  of  it  amatory,  the  other  half  of  it  satirical, 
and  the  whole  of  it  extraordinarily  vivid  and  civiUsing. 
It  would  be  too  much  to  call  the  Roman  de  la  Rose  a 
great  poem,  or  even  two  great  poems  fused  into  one. 
But  it  certainly  was  one  of  the  most  influential  works 
which  ever  proceeded  from  the  pen  of  man.  Its  in- 
fluence, if  we  look  at  it  broadly,  was  in  the  direction 
of  warmth  and  colour.  It  glowed  like  a  fire,  it  flashed 
like  a  sunrise.  Guillaume  de  Lorris  deserves  our  eternal 
thanks  for  being  the  first  in  modem  Europe  to  write 
"  pour  esgaier  les  coeurs."  He  introduced  into  poetry 
amenity,  the  pulse  of  life,  the  power  of  Earthly  Love. 

It  is  useful  for  us  to  compare  the  Roman  de  la  Rose 
with  what  the  best  Enghsh  poets  were  writing  at  the 
same  time.  What  do  we  find  ?  We  find  a  few  dismal 
fragments  of  Scriptural  morality  and  one  or  two  sermons 
in  verse.  We  may  speculate  in  what  spirit  a  dulled 
English  minstrel  of  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
would  read  the  bold  and  brilliant  couplets  of  Jean  de 
Meung.  He  would  certainly  be  dazzled,  and  perhaps 
be  scandalised.  He  would  creep  back  to  his  own 
clammy  Ayenhite  of  Inwyt  and  his  stony  Cursor  Mundi 
to  escape  from  so  much  dangerous  warmth  and  colour. 


34^  French  Profiles 

It  seems  as  though  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  England 
steadily  refused  to  enter  that  fair  orchard  where  Beauty 
and  Love  were  dancing  hand  in  hand  around  the  thorny 
hedge  that  guarded  the  Rosebud  of  the  World.  But 
the  revelation  came  at  last,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  English  poetry,  as  it  has  since  become,  in  the 
hands  of  Shakespeare  and  Keats  and  Tennyson,  sprang 
into  life  when  the  English  poets  first  became  acquainted 
with  the  gallant,  courteous,  and  amatory  allegory  of 
the  Worship  of  the  Rose. 

It  is  very  interesting  to  see  that,  apparently,  it  was 
no  less  a  person  than  Chaucer  who  led  English  readers 
first  to  the  grassy  edge  of  the  fountain  of  love.  The 
evidence  is  curiously  obscure,  and  has  greatly  exercised 
Chaucerian  scholars.  But  the  truth  seems  to  be  that 
Chaucer  translated  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose,  as  he  tells  us 
himself  in  The  Legend  of  Good  Women,  but  that  of  this 
translation  only  a  fragment  now  survives.  The  other 
two  fragments,  always  printed  together  with  Chaucer's, 
are  now  considered  to  be  not  his,  and  indeed  to  come 
from  two  different  hands.  Into  this  vexed  question  we 
must  not  go,  but  it  is  worth  noticing  that  although 
the  three  fragments  which  make  up  the  fourteenth- 
century  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  only  cover,  together,  one- 
third  of  the  French  text,  Chaucer  constantly  quotes 
from  and  refers  to  passages  from  other  parts  of  the 
poem,  showing  that  he  was  familiar  with  it  all. 

English  poetry,  we  may  observe,  had  more  to  learn 
from  Guillaume  de  Lorris  than  from  Jean  de  Meung, 
greater  and  more  vigorous  writer  though  the  latter  might 
be.  What  modern  English  poetry,  in  fact,  in  its  restless 
adolescence,  was  leaning  to  France  for  was  not  so  much 
vigour  as  grace.  It  had  satiric  vigour  of  its  own  in  its 
apocalyptical  Langland.    But  what  beamed  and  glowed 


French  Influence  349 

upon  Chaucer  from  the  Roman  de  la  Rose  was  its  human 
sweetness,  its  perfume  as  of  a  bush  of  eglantine  in  April 
sunshine.  It  was  the  first  delicate  and  civilised  poem 
of  modem  Europe,  and  its  refinement  and  elegance,  its 
decorated  beauty  and  its  close  observation  of  the 
human  heart  were  the  qualities  which  attracted  to  it 
Chaucer,  as  he  came  starved  from  the  chill  allegories 
and  moralities  of  his  formless  native  literature. 

It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1359  t^^*  Chaucer,  as  a 
page  in  the  retinue  of  Prince  Lionel,  paid  what  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  his  earhest  visit  to  France.  He 
took  his  part  in  the  luckless  invasion  of  Champagne, 
and  he  was  captured  by  the  French,  perhaps  at  R^thel. 
Until  March  1360,  when  King  Edward  III.  ransomed 
him  for  the  sum  of  £16,  he  was  a  prisoner  in  France. 
During  these  five  or  six  months  we  have  to  think  of 
Chaucer  as  a  joyous  youth  of  nineteen,  little  cast  down 
by  the  fortunes  of  war,  but  full  of  sentiment,  poetry, 
and  passion.  Up  to  that  time,  doubtless,  he  had  read 
few  or  none  but  French  books.  We  cannot  question 
that  he  was  famihar  with  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  and  it 
is  just  possible  that  it  was  at  this  time  that  he  came 
in  contact  with  the  lyrical  writers  whose  personal  poetry 
affected  him  so  much  later  on.  I  am  incHned,  however, 
to  think  this  unhkely,  because  Eustache  Deschamps 
was  a  youth  of  about  Chaucer's  own  age,  and  although 
Guillaume  de  Machault  was  considerably  older,  there 
had  been  little  public  distribution  of  his  verses  so  early 
as  1360. 

We  must  put  the  date  of  Chaucer's  coming  under 
the  influence  of  the  French  writers  of  chants  royaux 
and  lais  and  ballades  a  Uttle  later.  In  the  summer  of 
1369  he  was  once  more  in  France,  and  this  time,  it 
would  appear,  on  some  pacific  embassage.     Perhaps  he 


350  French  Profiles 

escaped  from  the  plague  which  decimated  England  in 
that  year,  and  carried  off  even  Queen  Philippa  herself. 
Perhaps  he  was  engaged  on  a  diplomatic  mission.  We 
have  to  walk  carefully  in  the  darkness  of  these  mediaeval 
dates,  which  offer  difficulties  even  to  the  erudition  of 
M.  Marcel  Schwob.  At  all  events,  Chaucer  was  certainly 
then  "  in  partibus  Franciae,"  and  it  can  hardly  but 
have  been  now  that  he  fell  under  the  influence  of 
Machault,  whom  he  admired  so  much,  and  of  Eustache 
Deschamps,  in  whom  he  awakened  so  enthusiastic  a 
friendship.^  There  was  an  entente  cordiale  indeed  when 
Deschamps  and  Froissart  complimented  Chaucer,  and 
Chaucer  imitated  Machault  and  Oton  de  Granson.  We 
find  the  English  poet  passing  through  France  again  in 
1373,  and  again  in  1377.  We  have  a  vague  and  accidental 
record  of  at  least  seven  of  these  diplomatic  journeys, 
although  after  1378  the  French  interest  seems  entirely 
swallowed  up  in  the  far  more  vivid  fascination  which 
Italy  exercised  over  him. 

To  a  poet  who  was  privileged  to  come  beneath  the 
intellectual  sway  of  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  at  the 
glorious  close  of  their  careers,  it  might  well  be  that 
such  suns  would  seem  entirely  to  eclipse  the  tapers  of 
those  who  composed  ballades  and  virelais  in  the  rich 
provinces  north  of  the  Loire.  Himself  a  man  of  far 
greater  genius  than  any  French  writer  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  we  might  be  prepared  to  find  Chaucer  disdaining 
the  gentle  balladists  of  France.  He  had,  to  a  far 
greater  degree  than  any  of  them,  vigour,  originaUty, 
fulness  of    invention.     Eustache  Deschamps  is  some- 

*  Mr.  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  reminds  me  that,  in  his  celebrated 
letter  to  the  Constable  of  Portugal,  the  Spanish  poet  Santillana 
goes  into  raptures  about  four  of  the  writers  whom  Chaucer 
admired — Guillaume  de  Lorris,  Jean  de  Meung,  Machault,  and 
Granson. 


French    Influence  351 

times  a  very  forcible  poet,  but  he  sinks  into  insignificance 
when  we  set  him  side  by  side  with  the  giant  who  wrote 
the  Canterbury  Tales.  Yet  if  Chaucer  brought  vigour 
to  EngUsh  poetry,  he  found  in  France,  and  among  these 
rhetorical  lyrists,  precisely  the  quaUties  which  were 
lacking  at  home.  What  it  was  essential  for  England 
to  receive  at  that  most  critical  moment  of  her  intel- 
lectual history  was  an  external,  almost  a  superficial, 
matter.  She  did  not  require  the  body  and  bones  of 
genius,  but  the  garments  with  which  talent  covers 
them.  These  robes  are  what  we  name  grace,  elegance, 
melody  and  workmanship,  and  these  delicate  textiles 
were  issuing  in  profusion  from  the  looms  of  France. 

This  is  the  secret  of  the  strong  influence  exercised 
on  a  very  great  poet  like  Chaucer,  and  through  him 
upon  the  poetry  of  England,  by  a  writer  so  essentially 
mediocre  as  Guillaume  de  Machault.  It  was  the 
accomphshed  tradition,  the  picturesque  and  artistic 
skill  of  the  lesser  poet,  which  so  strongly  attracted  the 
greater.  From  Machault  EngUsh  poetry  took  that 
heroic  couplet  which  had  hitherto  been  unknown  to  it, 
and  which  was  to  become  one  of  its  most  abundant 
and  characteristic  forms.  In  a  variety  of  ways  the 
prosody  of  Great  Britain  was  affected  by  that  of  France 
between  1350  and  1370.  The  loose  and  languid  forms 
in  which  British  poets  had  hitherto  composed  were 
abandoned  in  deUght  at  the  close  metre  of  the  French, 
and  about  1350  John  Gower  produced  his  Cinquante 
Balades  not  merely  in  the  form  but  in  the  very  language 
of  Eustache  Deschamps.  His  Mirour  de  I'Omme,  a 
long  and  important  poem  first  printed  by  Mr.  Macaulay 
in  1899,  is  an  instance  of  pure  Gallicisation.  Chaucer 
did  not  imitate  the  French  thus  grossly.  Indeed,  he 
went  to  France  for  nothing  interior  or  essential,  but, 


35^  French  Profiles 

sensitively  conscious  that  his  own  country  lacked  most 
of  all  the  aesthetic  graces,  he  borrowed  from  writers 
like  Machault  and  Granson  the  external  colour  and  the 
technical  forms.  But  the  substantial  forces  which 
awakened  the  splendid  bourgeois  genius  of  Chaucer  were 
the  aristocratic  influences  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and 
Boccaccio. 

Two  hundred  years  later,  at  the  next  great  crisis  of 
English  literature,  a  very  similar  condition  is  apparent, 
though  exposed  with  less  intensity.  The  mediaeval 
forms  of  poetry,  allegorical,  didactic,  diffuse,  had  now 
worn  themselves  out.  There  was  a  total  abandonment 
of  "  gardens  "  of  rhetoric,  of  piaisances  of  morality. 
These  efforts  of  exhausted  fancy  continued  to  please 
English  readers  longer  than  they  did  French  ones, 
and  it  is  to  be  noted  that  their  decay  was  sudden  with 
us,  not  gradual  as  with  you.  Not  only,  for  instance, 
did  the  traditional  rhetoricians  of  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century  exercise  no  influence  on  English 
thought,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  a  single  person 
in  England  read  a  line  of  Jean  Le  Maire  des  Beiges. 
But  a  little  later  all  is  different.  A  recent  critic  has 
said  that  the  writings  of  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  though 
not  epoch-making,  were  "  epoch-marking."  They  were 
not  men  of  genius,  but  they  were  of  eminently  modern 
taste.  They  perceived  that  everybody  was  tired  of 
long-winded  allegory  and  rhetoric,  and  they  set  them- 
selves to  write  verse  "  in  short  parcels,"  that  is  to  say, 
in  brief  lyrics.  So  they  looked  to  France,  where  Wyatt 
passed,  probably,  in  1532.  What  did  he  find  ?  Doubt- 
less he  found  Clement  Marot  in  the  act  of  putting  forth 
L' Adolescence  Clementine.  It  is  probable  that  Marot, 
with  his  "  elegant  badinage,"  was  too  gay  for  these 
stiff  English  nobles,  so  solemn  and  rigid.    His  want 


French   Influence  353 

of  intellectual  ambition  would  strike  them,  and  they 
passed  on  to  Italy.  But  something  of  the  perfume  of 
France  was  left  upon  their  fingers,  and  they  seem  to 
have  borrowed,  perhaps  from  Melin  de  Saint-Gelais, 
but  more  probably  from  Marot,  the  sonnet-form, 
hitherto  unknown  in  England.  It  cannot  be  pretended 
that  in  the  great  awakening  of  English  lyrical  poetry 
in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  France  had  any 
great  share,  but  what  there  was  tended  in  the  aesthetic 
direction.  The  ugly  hardness  of  the  last  mediaeval 
poets  was  exchanged  for  a  daintiness  of  expression,  a 
graceful  lucidity,  in  the  merit  of  which  Clement  Marot's 
rondeaux  and  epigrams  had  a  distinct  share. 

We  have  now  considered  two  instances — the  one 
important,  the  other  slight — in  which  English  poetry 
received,  at  critical  moments,  a  distinct  colour  from  the 
neighbouring  art  of  France.  In  each  case  the  influence 
was  exercised  at  a  time  when  the  poetic  ambition  of 
our  country  greatly  exceeded  the  technical  skill  of  its 
proficients,  and  when  the  verse-writers  were  glad  to 
go  to  school  to  masters  more  habituated  to  art  and 
grace  than  themselves.  But  we  have  now  another  and 
a  very  curious  phenomenon  to  note.  Fifty  years  later 
than  the  revival  of  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  when  Elizabethan 
literature  was  beginning  to  rise  into  prominence,  several 
very  strenuous  efforts  were  made  to  take  advantage  of 
contemporary  French  accomplishment,  and  with  one 
accord  these  attempts  conspicuously  failed.  We  find 
in  1580  that  the  French  were  "  highly  regarded  "  by 
the  school  of  versifiers  at  Cambridge,  and  before  this 
Edmund  Spenser  had  translated  the  Visions  of  Joachim 
Du  Bellay.  It  might  be  supposed  that  this  would  be 
the  beginning  of  a  consistent  imitation  of  the  PUiade 
by  the  English  poets— just,  for  instance,  as  modern 

A  A 


354  French   Profiles 

Swedish  poetry  was  at  this  moment  started  by  Rosen- 
hane's  imitations  of  Ronsard.  But  on  the  vast  wave 
of  Ehzabethan  hterature,  now  sweeping  up  with  irre- 
sistible force  and  volume,  we  find  scarcely  a  trace  of 
the  Pleiade.  The  one  important  writer  who  borrowed 
from  the  French  was  Samuel  Daniel,  whose  famous 
Delia  of  1592  obviously  owes  both  its  title  and  its  form 
to  Maurice  Sceve's  Delie  of  1544.  Daniel  also  imitates 
Baif  and  Pontus  de  Thyard,  and  had  a  vast  admiration  for 
his  more  immediate  contemporary,  Philippe  Desportes.^ 
The  experiments  of  Jodelle  and  Garnier  in  Senecan 
drama  were  examined  by  the  English  dramatists  of 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century — by  Kyd  and  Daniel 
in  particular — and  were  deliberately  rejected.  The 
pathway  taken  by  classical  French  tragedy  was  even 
touched  for  a  moment,  in  Titus  Andronicus,  by  Shake- 
speare himself,  but  it  was  instantly  quitted  for  the 
utterly  divergent  road  which  led  to  Othello  and  King 
Lear.  The  sententious  and  rhetorical  character  of 
French  drama  was  rejected  by  all  the  great  Elizabethans, 
and  the  only  contemporary  influence  accepted  from 
France  by  our  poetry  at  this  time  was  that  of  Du  Bartas, 
whose  violent  and  grotesque  style  gratified  a  growing 
taste  for  exaggeration  among  the  courtiers.  Du  Bartas 
pointed  the  way  to  that  decadence  which  fell  only  too 
swiftly  for  English  poetry,  like  a  plague  of  insects  upon 
some  glorious  summer  garden.  But  it  is  interesting 
to  observe  that  from  1580  to  1620,  that  is  to  say  during 
the  years  in  which  the  aesthetic  sense  was  most  widely 
and  most  brilliantly  developed  in  English  poetry, 
French  influences  of  the  best  kind  knocked  at  its  door 

*  Since  this  was  written,  however,  Mr.  Sidney  Lee,  in  a  valuable 
essay  on  "  The  Elizabethan  Sonnet-Literature  "  (printed  in  June 
1904),  has  drawn  attention  to  Lodge's  indebtedness  to  Konsajrd. 


French   Influence  355 

in  vain.  In  its  superfluous  richness,  it  needed  no  further 
gifts.  It  had  colour  enough  and  substance  enough  to 
spare  for  all  the  world. 

Very  different  was  the  condition  of  things  fifty  years 
later.  EngUsh  poetry  in  the  Jacobean  age  was  hke  a 
plant  in  a  hothouse,  that  runs  violently  to  redundant 
blossom,  and  bears  the  germs  of  swift  decay  in  the 
very  splendour  of  its  buds.  Already,  before  the  death 
of  James  I.,  the  freshness  was  all  gone,  and  the  tendency 
to  decline  was  obvious.  Under  Charles  I.  the  develop- 
ment of  literature  was  considerably  warped,  and  at 
length  completely  arrested,  by  the  pressure  of  political 
events.  Then  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  and  the  English 
Court,  with  its  artistic  hangers-on,  was  dispersed  in 
foreign  countries. 

As  early  as  1624,  on  the  occasion  of  the  Marriage 
Treaty,  the  attention  of  the  Enghsh  poets  may  probably 
have  been  directed  to  Paris,  but  there  had  followed 
grave  estrangements  between  the  Courts  of  France  and 
England,  and  in  1627  a  disastrous  rupture.  The 
earliest  verses  of  Edmund  Waller  celebrate  incidents 
in  Buckingham's  expedition,  and  seem  to  prove  that 
Waller  had  even  then  been  made  aware  of  the  reforms 
in  French  prosody  instituted  by  Malherbe.  The  Civil 
War  broke  out  in  1642,  and  the  raising  of  the  king's 
standard  at  Nottingham  was  the  signal  to  the  Muses 
to  snatch  up  their  lyres  and  quit  this  inhospitable 
island.  The  vast  majority  of  our  living  poets  were 
Royalists,  and  when  Charles  I.  was  defeated  they  either 
withdrew  into  obscurity  or  left  the  country.  Suckling 
was  already  in  Paris ;  he  was  followed  there  by  Cowley, 
Waller,  Davenant,  Denham,  and  Roscommon,  that  is 
to  say,  by  the  men  who  were  to  form  poetic  taste  in 
England  in  the  succeeding  generation.    From  1645  to 


356  French   Profiles 

1660  the  English  Court  was  in  Continental  exile,  and  it 
carried  about  it  a  troop  of  poets,  who  were  sent,  like 
so  many  carrier-pigeons,  upon  wild  diplomatic  errands. 

It  was  a  great  misfortune  for  English  poetry  that 
it  was  flung  into  the  arms  of  France  at  this  precise 
moment.  What  the  poets  found  in  Paris  was  not  the 
best  that  could  be  given  to  them,  and  what  there  was 
of  the  best  they  did  not  appreciate.  Their  own  taste 
in  its  rapid  decadence  had  become  fantastical  and  dis- 
ordered. We  have  but  to  look  at  the  early  Odes  of 
Abraham  Cowley  to  see  into  what  peril  English  style 
had  sunken.  It  had  grown  diffuse  and  yet  rugged; 
it  had  surrendered  itself  to  a  wild  abuse  of  metaphor, 
and,  conscious  of  its  failing  charm,  it  was  trying  to  pro- 
duce an  impression  by  violent  extravagance  of  imagery. 
Its  syntax  had  all  gone  wrong ;  it  had  become  the  prey 
of  tortured  grammatical  inversions. 

It  is  strange  that  in  coming  to  France  the  English 
poets  of  1645  did  not  see  the  misfortune  of  all  this. 
They  should  have  found,  if  they  had  but  had  eyes  to 
perceive  it,  that  French  poetry  was  on  the  high  road 
to  escape  the  very  faults  we  have  just  mentioned. 
The  fault  of  poetry  such  as  that  of  Waller  and  Davenant 
is  that  it  is  complicated  and  yet  not  dignified.  Well, 
the  English  Royalists  who  waited  upon  Queen  Henrietta 
in  Paris  might  have  observed  in  the  verses  of  Malherbe 
and  Racan  poetry  which  was  majestic  and  yet  simple,  an 
expression  of  true  and  beautiful  sentiments  in  language 
of  pure  sobriety.  But  these  were  the  new  classics  of 
France,  and  the  EngUsh  exiles  had  been  educated  in 
a  taste  which  was  utterly  anti-classic.  They  could  not 
comprehend  Malherbe,  who  was  too  stately  for  them, 
but  unfortunately  there  were  other  influences  which 
exactly  suited  their  habits  of  mind.    There  can  be  no 


French  Influence  357 

doubt  that  they  were  pleased  with  the  posthumous 
writings  of  Theophile  de  Viau,  whose  nature-painting 
has  left  its  mark  on  Cowley,  and  unquestionably,  like 
the  rest  of  the  world,  they  were  enchanted  with  the 
fantastic,  almost  burlesque  talent  of  Saint-Amant, 
who  ruled  the  salons  of  Paris  during  the  whole  of  the 
English  Exile,  and  who  seemed  to  his  admirers  of  1650 
a  very  great  poet  whom  it  was  a  distinction  to  imitate. 

The  English  ear  for  rhythm  is  not  constituted  like 
the  French  ear.  We  have  a  prosodical  instinct  which  is 
entirely  unlike  yours.  This  was  ill  comprehended,  or 
rather  not  comprehended  at  all,  by  the  EngUsh  Exiles. 
They  were  confronted  by  the  severity  of  Malherbe  and 
the  uniformity  of  Maynard,  and  they  were  unable  to 
appreciate  either  the  one  or  the  other.  The  EngUsh 
sublimity,  as  exemplified  at  that  very  hour  by  the 
majesty  of  Milton,  is  obtained  by  quite  other  means. 
The  sympathy  of  the  English  poets  was  with  what  is 
irregular,  and  they  never  were  genuine  classics,  like 
the  French,  but  merely,  in  ceasing  to  be  romantic, 
became  pseudo-classical.  The  very  type  of  a  pseudo- 
classic  in  revolt  against  romance  is  Denham,  in  his 
extravagantly-praised  Cooper's  Hill.  To  compare  this 
with  the  exquisite  Retraite  of  Racan,  with  which  it  is 
almost  exactly  contemporaneous,  is  to  realise  what  the 
difference  is  between  a  falsely  and  a  genuinely  classical 
poem.  Racan's  lines  seem  to  be  breathed  out  without 
effort  from  a  pure  Latin  mind ;  the  couplets  of  Denham 
are  like  the  shout  of  a  barbarian,  who  has  possessed 
himself  of  a  toga,  indeed,  but  has  no  idea  of  how  it 
ought  to  be  worn. 

It  is  noticeable  that  foreigners  are  seldom  influenced 
in  their  style  by  their  immediate  contemporaries  in 
another  country.    The  prestige  of  public  acceptance  is 


358  French   Profiles 

required  before  an  alien  dares  to  imitate.  Hence  we 
search  almost  in  vain  for  traces  of  direct  relation  between 
the  Parisian  Precieux  and  their  British  brethren.  There 
is  little  evidence  that  Voiture  or  Benserade  had  admirers 
among  the  Exiles,  although  they  returned  to  England 
with  ideas  about  pastoral,  which  I  think  they  must  have 
owed  to  the  iglogues  of  Segrais.  But  it  is  certain  that 
they  were  infatuated  by  the  burlesque  writers  of  France, 
and  that  Scarron,  in  particular,  was  instantly  imitated. 
The  Virgile  TravesH  was  extravagantly  admired  and 
promptly  paraphrased  in  England,  and  in  Cotton  we 
had  a  poet  who  deliberately  and  with  great  popular 
success  set  out  to  be  the  English  Scarron.  Trivial 
in  French,  these  burlesque  exercises  became  in  English 
intolerably  heavy  and  vulgarly  obscene.  The  taste  for 
rhymed  burlesque  was  a  poor  gift  for  the  Exiles  to 
bring  back  with  them  from  the  country  which  already 
possessed  the  Adonis  of  La  Fontaine. 

In  offering  to  their  countrymen  the  forms  of  French 
poetry,  without  giving  them  any  of  its  enchanting 
dignity  and  harmony,  the  English  poets  of  the  Restora- 
tion were  doing  the  exact  opposite  of  what  Chaucer 
had  done  in  the  fourteenth  century.  They  imported 
the  substance  without  the  colour;  they  neglected  pre- 
cisely the  gift  which  our  neighbour  has  always  had  to 
bestow,  namely,  the  charm  of  aesthetic  proportion. 
They  were  partly  unfortunate,  no  doubt,  in  the  moment 
of  their  return  to  London.  It  was  in  the  very  year 
1660  that  the  great  revival  of  poetic  taste  began  in 
Paris,  and,  by  coming  back  to  their  exciting  duties 
and  pleasures  at  that  moment,  the  English  exiles 
excluded  themselves  from  participation  in  Boileau, 
Moliere,  and  Racine.  But  would  they  have  learned 
to  appreciate  these  great   masters   if  the  restoration 


French  Influence  359 

of  the  House  of  Stuart  had  been  delayed  for  twenty 
years  ?  It  is  permissible  to  believe  that  they  would 
not. 

The  invasion  of  the  British  stage  by  French  drama 
between  1665  and  1690  is  the  most  striking  example 
of  the  influence  of  French  taste  which  the  history  of 
English  poetry  has  to  offer.  The  theatres  had  been 
closed  by  an  ordinance  of  the  Puritan  government, 
and  all  performance  of  plays  forbidden  throughout 
England  in  1642.  So  fierce  was  the  enactment  that 
the  theatres  were  dismantled,  in  order  to  make  acting 
impossible,  while  all  actors  in  plays,  even  in  private, 
were  liable  to  be  publicly  whipped,  and  the  audiences 
individually  fined.  The  result  of  this  savage  law  was 
that  the  very  tradition  of  histrionics  died  out  in  England, 
which  had  been  the  most  theatrical  country  in  Europe. 
It  was  not  one  of  the  least  satisfactions  to  the  banished 
Royalists  in  Paris  that  they  could  enjoy  their  beloved 
entertainment  there,  as  it  was  no  longer  possible  to 
do  in  London.  They  covdd  not  sit  through  performances 
of  Fletcher  and  Massinger  and  Ford,  but  they  could 
delight  their  eyes  and  their  ears  with  the  tragedies  of 
Scudery  and  Tristan  rHermite  and  La  Calprenede. 
You  will  remind  me  that  they  could  do  better  than 
this  by  attending  the  dramas  of  Rotrou  and  ten  times 
better  by  studying  those  of  Comeille.  But  the  curious 
thing  is  that  while  there  are  definite  traces  of  La  Cal- 
prenede and  Scudery  on  our  English  drama,  there  is 
not,  so  far  as  I  know,  a  vestige  of  Rotrou,  and  the 
EngUsh  attitude  to  Corneille  is  very  extraordinary.  A 
poetaster,  named  Joseph  Rutter,  translated  Le  Cid 
as  early  as  1637,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  midst  of  Corneille's 
original  triumph ;  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  Rutter's 
version  was  made  at  the  command  of  the  English  king 


360  French  Profiles 

and  queen.  This  bad  translation,  which  enjoyed  no 
success,  sufficed  for  EngUsh  curiosity.  On  the  other 
hand,  Les  Horaces  was  a  great  favourite  in  England, 
and  was  carefully  translated  into  verse  by  three  or 
four  poets.  Some  couplets  by  Sir  John  Denham, 
accompanying  the  version  made  about  1660  by  the 
"  Matchless  Orinda,"  have  a  particular  interest  for  us. 
Denham  (who  was,  we  must  remember,  the  Racan  of 
the  classical  movement  in  England)  says  of  Les  Horaces  : 

"  This  martial  story,  which  through  France  did  come, 
And  there  was  wrought  on  great  Corneille's  loom, 
Orinda's  matchless  muse  to  Britain  brought, 
And  foreign  verse  our  English  accents  taught." 

The  total  ignoring  of  the  Cid,  while  Les  Horaces  received 
boundless  admiration,  is  a  curious  fact,  which  can  only, 
I  think,  become  intelligible  when  we  observe  that  to  an 
English  audience  in  1665  the  chivalry  and  panache  of 
the  former  play  were  unintelligible,  while  the  showy 
patriotism  and  high-strung  amorosity  of  the  other  were 
exactly  to  the  English  taste.  Wherever  Corneille's 
psychological  study  of  the  human  heart  became  subtle, 
he  rose  above  the  range  of  the  Royalist  exiles.  In 
the  English  tragedies  of  the  Restoration  we  see  the 
predominant  part  which  violent  passion  took  in  the 
interest  of  the  age.  This,  together  with  the  laborious 
and  unflagging  emphasis  which  becomes  to  us  so  tedious 
in  these  dramatic  writers,  the  English  poets  borrowed, 
not  from  Corneille,  whom  they  may  have  venerated 
but  hardly  comprehended,  but  from  the  lesser  heroic 
dramatists  of  the  same  age. 

A  little  later  in  the  seventeenth  century,  when  the 
great  men  had  made  their  appearance  in  France,  the 
English  dramatists  could  no  longer  overlook  Moli^re 
and  Racine ;  but  the  luminous  wit  of  the  one  and  the 


French  Influence  361 

harmonious  and  passionate  tenderness  of  the  other  were 
beyond  their  reach.  There  is  evidence  of  the  favour 
which  Quinault,  especially  for  his  Roman  tragedies, 
enjoyed  in  London,  and  there  was  something  in  his 
colourless,  melodious,  and  graceful  style  which  attracted 
and  did  not  terrify  the  contemporary  English  translator. 
The  want  of  interest  shown  by  the  London  adapters 
in  the  successive  masterpieces  of  Racine  is  quite  extra- 
ordinary. A  solitary  attempt  was  made  in  1675  by 
John  Crowne,  or  under  his  auspices,  to  bring  Andromaque 
on  the  English  stage,  but  shorn  of  all  its  tender  beauty. 
This,  amazing  as  it  sounds,  is  practically  the  only 
evidence  remaining  to  show  that  our  Gallicised  play- 
wrights were  conscious  of  the  existence  of  Racine. 
The  fact  is,  no  doubt,  that  he  soared  above  their  reach 
in  his  celestial  emotion,  his  delicate  passion  and  his 
penetration  into  the  human  heart.  English  versifica- 
tion in  1675  was  capable  of  rough  and  vigorous  effects, 
music  of  the  drum  and  the  fife ;  but  it  had  no  instrument 
at  its  command  at  that  time  which  could  reproduce 
the  notes  of  Racine  upon  the  viohn.  Here  was  an 
instance  of  colour  which  was  evanescent  and  could  not 
be  transferred.  The  substance  of  Moliere,  on  the  other 
hand,  offered  no  technical  difficulties.  It  is  extra- 
ordinary how  many  of  MoU^re's  plays  were  imitated 
or  adapted  on  the  English  stage  during  his  Ufe-time 
or  very  shortly  after  the  close  of  it.  Our  great  Dryden 
mingled  L'itoutdi  with  the  Amant  Indiscret  of  Quinault, 
and  as  the  result  produced  Sir  Martin  Mar-all  in  1667. 
He  used  the  Dipit  Amour eux  and  Les  Prdcieuses  Ridicules 
in  adapting  Thomas  Comeille's  arrangement  of  El 
Astrologo  fingido  of  Calderon,  in  1668.  The  English 
playwrights,  however,  had  no  real  appreciation  of 
Moliere,  though  they  stole  from  him  so  freely.    The 


362  French   Profiles 

poetess,  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  being  accused  in  1678  of 
borrowing  scenes  from  the  "  Malad  Imagenere  "  (as  she 
called  it),  admitted  frankly  that  she  had  done  so,  but 
"  infinitely  to  Moleer's  advantage." 

The  poetry  of  France  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
seventeenth  century  is  pre-eminently  characteristic  of 
a  grave  and  polished  system  of  society.  The  age  of 
Racine  was,  and  could  not  but  be,  an  age  of  extreme 
refinement.  It  was  useless  for  the  crude  contemporary 
dramatists  of  London  to  take  the  substance  of  the 
Parisian  masterpieces,  since  their  spirit  absolutely 
evaded  them.  EngUsh  society  under  Charles  II.  had 
elements  of  force  and  intellectual  curiosity,  but  it  lacked 
exactly  what  Paris  possessed — the  ornament  of  pohshed, 
simple,  and  pure  taste.  In  the  jargon  of  the  time 
Racine  and  Moliere  were  "  correct,"  while  even  English 
poets  of  genius,  such  as  Dryden  and  Otway,  hardly 
knew  that  "  correctness  "  existed.  Hence  Boileau,  in 
whom  "  correctness "  took  the  form  of  a  doctrinal 
system,  made  no  impression  at  all  upon  the  English 
poetry  of  his  own  time.  He  could  not  act  upon  EngUsh 
social  thought  until  England  ceased  to  be  barbarous, 
and  it  is,  therefore,  not  until  the  age  of  Queen  Anne 
that  the  powerful  influence  of  Boileau,  like  a  penetrating 
odour,  is  perceived  in  Enghsh  poetry,  and  above  all 
in  the  verse  of  Pope.  In  the  First  Epistle  of  the  Second 
Book,  published  in  1737,  that  great  poet  reviews  the 
literature  of  the  last  seventy  years  in  lines  of  extra- 
ordinary strength  and  conciseness  : — 

"  We  conquered  France,  but  felt  our  captive's  charms; 
Her  arts  victorious  triumph'd  o'er  our  arms  : 
Britain  to  soft  refinements  less  a  foe, 
Wit  grew  polite,  and  numbers  learned  to  flow. 
Waller  was  smooth ;    but  Dryden  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full-resounding  line. 


French  Influence  363 

The  long  majestic  march  and  energy  divine. 

Though  still  some  traces  of  our  rustic  vein 

And  splay-foot  verse  remained,  and  will  remain. 

Late,  very  late,  correctness  grew  our  care, 

^Vhen  the  tired  nation  breath'd  from  civil  war. 

Exact  Racine  and  Comeille's  noble  fire 

Showed  us  that  France  had  something  to  admire. 

Not  but  the  tragic  spirit  was  our  own. 

And  full  in  Shakespeare,  fair  in  Otway  shone. 

But  Otway  failed  to  polish  or  refine, 

And  fluent  Shakespeare  scarce  effaced  a  line." 

When  Pope  wrote  these  vigorous  verses,  he  had 
reached  the  meridian  of  his  art.  He  was  the  greatest 
Hving  poet  not  only  of  England,  but  of  the  world. 
He  had  to  look  back  over  a  literary  career  of  nearly 
forty  years,  which  had  been  a  perpetual  triumph,  yet 
in  the  course  of  which  he  had  been  steadily  conducted 
by  the  genius  of  Boileau,  who  had  died  in  body  exactly 
at  the  moment  when  Pope  was  giving  new  lustre  to 
his  spirit.  No  critic  of  authority  will  question  that 
Pope  was  a  greater  writer  than  Boileau,  excellent  as 
the  latter  is.  In  the  innumerable  instances  where 
direct  comparison  between  them  is  invited,  the  rich- 
ness of  Pope's  language,  the  picturesque  fulness  of  his 
line,  transcends  the  art  of  Boileau.  But  there  is  always 
due  a  peculiar  honour  to  the  artist  who  is  a  forerunner, 
and  this  belongs  to  the  author  of  Le  Lutrin. 

The  qualities  which  entered  the  English  poetry  of 
the  eighteenth  century  came  through  Pope,  but  they 
had  their  source  in  Boileau.  From  him,  enemy  as  he 
was  to  affectation,  pedantry,  and  spurious  emphasis, 
we  learned  that  a  verse,  whether  good  or  bad,  should 
at  least  say  something.  Boileau's  attitude  of  "  honest 
zeal "  commended  itself,  theoretically  if  not  always 
practically,  to  the  mind  of  Pope,  who  is  never  tired  of 
praising  the  Frenchman,  "  that  most  candid  satirist." 
Both  imitated  Horace,  but  even  Pope's  vanity  could 


364  French   Profiles 

not  conceal  the  fact  that  he  studied  the  great  Roman 
master  mainly  in  the  ipitres  of  Boileau.  We  have  here 
an  excellent  example  of  the  kind  of  influence  of  which 
we  found  an  example  so  many  centuries  back  in  Chaucer. 
Here  it  is  not  a  dull  transference  of  material,  ill-com- 
prehended, ill-digested,  from  one  literature  to  another. 
It  is  the  capture  of  the  transient  charm,  the  colour  and 
odour  of  a  living  art.  Few  exercises  in  criticism  would 
be  more  instructive  than  an  analysis  of  French  influences 
on  the  splendid  poetry  of  Pope.  They  mainly  resolve 
themselves  into  the  results  of  a  patient  and  inteUigent 
study  of  Boileau.  If  we  compare  the  Essay  on  Criticism 
with  the  Art  Poetique  we  see  the  young  Pope  at  the  feet 
of  the  ancient  tyrant  of  letters;  if  we  place  Le  Luirin 
by  the  side  of  The  Rape  of  the  Lock  we  see  the  knack 
of  mock-heroic  caught,  and  developed,  and  raised  to 
a  pinnacle  of  technical  beauty.  The  Epistle  to  Dr. 
Arbuthnot  is  vastly  superior  to  the  poem  A  son  Esprit, 
but  Pope  would  never  have  traversed  the  road  if  Boileau 
had  not  pointed  out  the  way.  Pope  captured  the  very 
touch  of  Boileau,  but  he  heightened  it,  and  he  made 
it  EngUsh.  How  English  he  made  it  can  be  seen  from 
the  fact  that  the  manner  spread,  as  Pope's  and  as 
English,  to  the  literatures  of  Italy,  Sweden,  and  even 
Russia. 

It  spread,  moreover,  to  the  whole  of  the  fashion  of 
poetry  to  be  written  in  Pope's  own  England  through 
the  remainder  of  the  eighteenth  centur>\  Even  where 
that  fashion  turned  to  forms  more  unclassical  or  even 
languidly  romantic,  a  faint  varnish  of  Pope's  precision 
continued  to  characterise  it.  But  during  the  eighteenth 
century  (that  epoch  so  curious  in  the  history  of  poetry, 
where  everything  seemed  to  combine  to  hold  the  imagina- 
tion in  a  static  if  not  in  a  semi-paralysed  condition)  there 


French   Influence  365 

was  no  more  display  of  influence  from  France  on  England. 
What  influence  there  was  was  exercised  all  in  the  reverse 
direction.  The  moral  disquisition  in  exquisitely-serried 
couplets  gave  way  in  some  degree  to  descriptive  poetry 
as  Thomson  devised  it,  to  lyrical  poetry  as  it  was  con- 
ceived by  Gray.  But  these  writers,  eminent  enough  in 
their  place  and  their  degree,  not  only  owed  nothing  to 
France,  but  they  exerted  an  immediate  influence  on  the 
poets  of  that  country.  The  Abbe  Delille,  with  his 
oUves  and  his  vines,  his  com-flelds  and  his  gardens 
and  his  bees,  was  inspired  in  the  second  degree,  no 
doubt,  by  Virgil,  but  in  the  first  d^ee,  unquestionably, 
by  the  natural  descriptions  of  the  English  poets  of  the 
preceding  generation. 

When  we  come  to  the  dawn  of  a  new  age,  when  we 
examine  for  exotic  impressions  the  writings  of  the 
pioneers  of  the  romantic  revival,  we  find  that  the 
prestige  is  still  all  on  the  side  of  Great  Britain.  On 
Cowper  and  Bums  and  Blake  we  discover  no  trace  of 
any  consciousness  of  foreign  influence,  other  than  is 
indicated  by  an  occasional  and  usually  hostile  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  existence  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  on 
the  prosaic  confines  of  the  art.  Quite  different  is  the 
case  in  France,  when  we  approach  a  writer  in  some 
respects  more  modem  than  either  Cowper  or  Bums, 
namely,  Andre  Chenier,  the  more  conventional  parts 
of  whose  works  display,  to  an  English  reader,  a  far 
greater  pre-occupation  with  EngUsh  poetry  than,  I 
beUeve,  any  French  critic  has  noted.  In  the  later 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  deplorable  didacticism 
of  verse,  with  the  tedium  of  its  topographical  and 
descriptive  pieces,  of  its  odes  to  Inoculaiion  and  to 
The  Genius  of  the  Thames,  of  its  epics  on  the  cultivation 
of  the  sugar-cane,  and  the  breeding  of  sheep  and  the 


366  French   Profiles 

navigation  of  sailing-vessels,  although  it  took  its  start 
from  a  misconception  of  the  teaching  of  Boileau,  had 
long  ceased  to  be  definitely  French,  and  had  become 
technically  British  in  character.  But  the  group  of 
Parisian  poets,  so  solemn  and  so  deadly  dull,  who  formed 
the  court  of  Delille  after  the  French  Revolution,  were 
the  disciples  of  the  verse  of  Thomson,  in  fact,  as  much 
as  in  theory  they  were  the  pupils  of  the  prose  of 
Buffon. 

The  reaction  against  dr5mess  and  flatness  in  imagina- 
tive literature  was  complete  and  systematic  in  England 
long  before  it  had  been  accepted  by  the  intelligent  classes 
in  France.  The  authority  of  Chateaubriand,  although 
most  of  his  important  work  was  published  already,  was 
not  in  any  wide  degree  accepted  until  after  18 10,  even 
if  this  be  not  too  early  a  date  to  suggest  for  it,  while 
the  formular  tendency  of  the  whole  work  of  the  author 
of  Atala  and  Rene  was  rather  to  the  revival  of  a  vivid, 
picturesque,  and  imaginative  prose  than  to  the  study 
of  verse.  But  in  England,  before  1810,  the  revolution 
was  complete  in  the  essential  art  of  poetry  itself.  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  had  completed  their  reform,  and 
it  was  of  a  nature  absolutely  radical.  In  1798  they  had 
determined  that  "  the  passions  of  men  should  be  incor- 
porated with  the  beautiful  and  permanent  forms  of 
nature,"  and  they  had,  working  on  those  lines,  added 
to  the  poetry  of  the  world  some  of  its  most  perfect 
and  its  most  durable  ornaments.  Crabbe,  Campbell, 
even  Sir  Walter  Scott,  had  completely  revealed  the 
nature  of  their  genius  before  France  was  awakened  to 
the  full  lesson  of  Chateaubriand.  When  the  second 
romantic  epoch  was  revealed  in  France,  the  great  era 
in  England  was  over.  The  year  1822,  which  saw  Alfred 
de   Vigny,   Victor   Hugo,   and   Lamartine  ascend  the 


French   Influence  367 

Parisian  horizon  as  a  new  constellation  of  unequalled 
effulgence,  saw  the  burial  of  Shelley  in  that  Roman 
garden  of  death  where  Keats  had  shortly  before  been 
laid,  and  saw  the  retirement  of  B5n:on  to  Genoa,  his 
latest  Italian  home. 

It  was  physically  impossible,  therefore,  that  the 
belated  Romantiques  in  France,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  could  exercise  any  influence 
over  their  British  brethren,  who  had  been  roused  from 
slumber  one  watch  earlier  than  they  had.  Far  north, 
in  the  valleys  of  Somerset,  by  the  Isis  at  Oxford,  long 
before  there  was  any  motion  of  life  by  the  Seine  or  by 
the  Rhone,  the  spirit  of  living  poetry  had  arisen,  singing, 
from  the  ground,  and  the  boyish  Lamartine  and  Vigny, 
had  they  been  aware  of  the  fact,  might  have  whispered 
of  their  EngUsh  predecessors  in  1810  : — 

"  By  rose-hung  river  and  light-foot  rill 

There  are  who  rest  not,  who  think  long 

Till  they  discern  as  from  a  hill 

At  the  sun's  hour  of  morning  song, 

Known  of  souls  only,  and  those  souls  free, 

The  sacred  spaces  of  the  sea." 

The  English  Romantics  of  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  earnestly  and  pointedly  repudiated  the 
influence  which  French  poetry  had  exercised  in  England 
a  hundred  years  earlier.  This  dehberate  revolt  finds 
a  very  interesting  expression  in  the  Sleep  and  Poetry 
of  Keats,  a  poem  of  much  importance  in  the  history 
of  criticism.  Sleep  and  Poetry  was  written  in  1816, 
six  years  before  the  first  Cenacle  was  formed  in  Paris, 
and  four  years  before  the  publication  of  Lamartine's 
Meditations  Poitiques.  In  the  course  of  it,  Keats 
describes  the  practice  of  the  Anglo-Gallic  writers  of 
verse  in  picturesque  and  stringent  language,  culminating 


368  French   Profiles 

in  an  attack  on  the  impeccable  Boileau  himself.     He 
says : — 

"  A  schism 
Nurtured  by  foppery  and  barbarism 
Made  great  Apollo  blush  for  this  his  land. 
Men  were  thought  wise  who  could  not  understand 
His  glories  :  with  a  puling  infant's  force 
They  swayed  about  upon  a  rocking-horse 
And  thought  it  Pegasus.  .  .  .  Ill-fated  race  ! 
That  blasphemed  the  bright  Lyrist  to  his  face 
And  did  not  know  it, — no,  they  went  about. 
Holding  a  poor,  decrepit  standard  out, 
Mark'd  with  most  flimsy  mottoes,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau  !  " 

During  the  ninety  years  which  separate  us  from  the 
early  enthusiasms  of  Keats  and  Shelley,  it  cannot  be 
said  that  this  influence  of  France  has  to  any  marked 
degree  asserted  itself  on  the  poetry  of  England.  It 
would  be  in  the  highest  degree  fantastic  to  pretend 
that  it  can  be  traced  on  the  texture  of  Tennyson  or 
of  the  Brownings.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the 
genius  of  Victor  Hugo,  although  of  such  overwhelming 
force  among  the  Latin  nations,  failed  to  awaken  the 
least  echo  in  the  poets  of  the  North.  The  allusions 
to  Hugo  in  the  writings  of  his  greatest  immediate 
contemporaries  in  England  are  ludicrously  perfunctory 
and  unappreciative.  Tennyson  addressed  to  him  a 
well-intentioned  sonnet  which  is  a  monument  of  tact- 
lessness, in  which  Victor  Hugo  is  addressed  as  "  Weird 
Titan  "  and  in  which  the  summit  of  the  French  poet's 
performance  appears  to  have  been  reached  in  his  having 
been  polite  to  one  of  Tennyson's  sons,  "  Victor  in 
drama,  victor  in  romance,"  the  English  poet  sings  in 
artless  wit,  and  shows  no  appreciation  whatever  of  the 
unmatched  victories  in  the  splendour  and  perfection 
of  lyrical  melody.     It  was  Mr.  Swinburne  who,  about 


French   Influence  369 

1866,   earliest   insisted   on   the   supremacy  of   Victor 
Hugo  : — 

"  Thou  art  chief  of  us,  and  lord ; 

Thy  song  is  as  a  sword 
Keen-edged  and  scented  in  the  blade  from  flowers ; 

Thou  art  lord  and  king ;  but  we 

Lift  younger  eyes,  and  see 
Less  of  high  hope,  less  hght  on  wandering  hours." 

In  spite,  however,  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  reiterated 
praise  of  that  "  imperial  soul,"  and  of  the  respectful 
study  which  has  been  given  to  the  poet  in  England 
for  the  last  forty  years,  Victor  Hugo  has  asserted  little 
or  no  influence  on  English  poetry.  Much  lesser  talents 
than  his,  however,  have  offered  in  the  later  years  of 
the  century  a  colour  to  a  certain  school  of  our  poets, 
and  it  is  in  Theophile  Gautier  and  Theodore  de  Banville 
that  our  English  Parnassians  found  something  of  the 
same  aesthetic  stimulus  that  their  predecessors  of  the 
fourteenth  century  found  in  Guillaume  de  Machault 
and  Eustache  Deschamps. 

But  our  hour  is  over,  and  this  brief  and  imperfect 
discourse  must  come  to  an  end.  We  have  very  lightly 
touched  on  the  events  of  six  hundred  years.  Are  we 
to  speculate,  imperfect  prophets  that  we  are,  on  the 
future  relations  of  the  two  great  countries  of  the  west, 
which,  far  beyond  all  others,  have  always  been  in  the 
vanguard  of  liberty  and  light  ?  That  is  a  feat  of  daring 
beyond  my  hmited  imagination.  But  I  cannot  help 
nourishing  a  confident  belief  that  in  the  future,  as  well 
as  in  the  past,  the  magnificent  literatures  of  France 
and  of  England  will  interact  upon  one  another,  that  each 
will,  at  the  right  psychological  moments,  flash  colour 
and  radiance  which  will  find  reflection  on  the  polished 
surface  of  the  other.    To  facilitate  this,  in  ever  so  small 

B  B 


370  French   Profiles 

and  so  humble  a  degree,  must  be  the  desire  of  every 
lover  of  England  and  of  France.  And  in  order  to  adopt 
from  each  what  shall  be  serviceable  to  the  other,  what 
is  most  needful  must  be  a  condition  of  mutual  intelli- 
gence. That  entente  cordiale  which  we  value  so  deeply, 
and  which  some  of  us  have  so  long  laboured  to  pro- 
mote,— it  must  not  be  confined  to  the  merchants  and 
to  the  politicians.  The  poets  also  must  insist  upon 
their  share  of  it. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

M.  MALLARM^  AND  SYMBOLISM 

It  was  with  not  a  little  hesitation  that  I  undertook  to 
unravel  a  corner  of  the  mystic  web,  woven  of  sunbeams 
and  electrical  threads,  in  which  the  poet  of  L'Apris- 
Midi  d'un  Faune  conceals  himself  from  curious  appre- 
hension. There  were  a  dozen  chances  of  my  inter- 
pretation being  wrong,  and  scarcely  one  of  its  being 
right.  My  delight  therefore  may  be  conceived  when  I 
received  a  most  gracious  letter  from  the  mage  himself; 
Apollonius  was  not  more  surprised  when,  by  a  fortunate 
chance,  one  of  his  prophecies  came  true.  I  quote  from 
this  charming  paper  of  credentials,  which  proceeds  to 
add  some  precious  details  : — 

"Paris,  Mardi  lo  Janvier  1893. 

"...  Votre  etude  est  un  miracle  de  divination  .  .  . 
Les  poetes  seuls  ont  le  droit  de  parler;  parce  qu'avant 
coup,  ils  savent.  II  y  a,  entre  toutes,  une  phrase,  ou 
vous  ecartez  tous  voiles  et  designez  la  chose  avec  une 
clairvoyance  de  diamant,  le  voici :  '  His  aim  ...  is 
to  use  words  in  such  harmonious  combination  as  will 
suggest  to  the  reader  a  mood  or  a  condition  which  is 
not  mentioned  in  the  text,  but  is  nevertheless  paramount 
in  the  poet's  mind  at  the  moment  of  composition.' 

"  Tout  est  \k.  Je  fais  de  la  Musique,  et  appelle  ainsi 
non  celie  qu'on  pent  tirer  du  rapprochment  euphonique 

373 


374  Appendix 

des  mots,  cette  premiere  condition  va  de  soi;  mais 
I'au  dela  magiquement  produit  par  certaines  dispositions 
de  la  parole,  ou  celle-ci  ne  reste  qu'a  I'etat  de  moyen 
de  communication  materielle  avec  le  lecteur  comme 
les  touches  du  piano.  Vraiment  entre  les  lignes  et 
au-dessus  du  regard  cela  se  passe,  en  toute  purete,  sans 
I'entremise  de  cordes  a  boyaux  et  de  pistons  comme  k 
I'orchestre,  qui  est  deja  industriel;  mais  c'est  la  meme 
chose  que  I'orchestre,  sauf  que  litterairement  ou  silen- 
cieusement.  Les  poetes  de  tous  les  temps  n'ont  jamais 
fait  autrement  et  il  est  aujourd'hui,  voil^  tout,  amusant 
d'en  avoir  conscience.  Employez  Musique  dans  le  sens 
grec,  au  fond  signifiant,  Idee  du  rythme  entre  les  rapports ; 
Ik,  plus  divine  que  dans  son  expression  publique  ou 
Symphonique.  Tres  mal  dit,  en  causant,  mais  vous 
saisissez  ou  plutot  aviez  saisi  tout  au  long  de  cette 
belle  etude  qu'il  faut  garder  telle  et  intacte.  Je  ne 
vous  chicane  que  sur  I'obscurite;  non,  cher  poete, 
excepte  par  maladresse  ou  gaucherie  je  ne  suis  pas 
obscur,  du  moment  qu'on  me  lit  pour  y  chercher  ce 
que  j'enonce  plus  haut,  ou  la  manifestation  d'un  art 
qui  se  sert — mettons  incidemment,  j'en  sais  la  cause 
profonde — du  langage  :  et  le  deviens,  bien  sur  !  si  Ton 
se  trompe  et  croit  ouvrir  le  journal.  Riez,  et  je  vous 
serre  la  main,  sur  ma  clarte. — Votre. 

SxfePHANE   MaLLARm£." 


INDEX 


Abbi  Mouret,  L',  Zola,  130 
AbbS   RoiUlet,   L' ,    Fabre,    F.. 

157,  166 
Abbi  Tigrane,  L',  Fabre,  151, 

157-162,  165 
Ablancourt,  Mimoires  of,  74 
Adelaide     du     Guesclin,     Vol- 
taire's, 44,  55 
Adolescence,     Climentine,     U, 

Marot,  352 
Aiss6,  Mademoiselle,  35-62 
Alcaforada,  Mariana,  68.     See 

Mariana. 
A16xis,  Paul,  129,  130,  138 
Amaldie,  d'Aurevilly's,  91,  92 
A  mant    Indiscret,    Quinault's, 

361 
A  mitiis        Francaises,        Les, 

Maurice  Barrds',  288-290 
Amour  Impossible,  L',  d'Aure- 

villy,  91,  92 
Amour    Marin,    L',    M.    Paul 

Fort,  337 
Amoureuses,  Les,  Daudet,  no, 

120 
Ancien  Rigime,  L',  Taine,  256 
Andromaque,  Racine's,  361 
Anneau  d'Amithyste,  L' ,  264 
Annunzio,  G.  D',  193,  241 
Aphrodite,  Pierre  Louys,  265 
Apris-Midi    d'un    Faune,    L' , 

lAaXlaxmk,  314-316,  373 
Arithuse,  M.  de  R6gnier,  301 
Argental,  Comte  d',  38,  49,  50, 

56,  57 
Arnold,  Matthew,  4,  28,   194, 

264,  287,  307 
Art  Poitique,  Boileau,  364 
Asse,  M.  Eugfene,  47,  82 


Atala,  Chateaubriand's,  366 
Athies,  A  un  Diner  d',   Aure- 

villy's,  93,  100,  loi 
Au  Maroc,  P.  Loti,  220 
Aumont,  Due  d',  54 
Aurevilly,     Jules    Barbey    d', 

89-102 
Avec  Trois  Mille  Cent  Francs, 

Daudet's,-i09 
Aventures   du   Grand   Sidoine, 

Zola's,  132 
d'Aydie,       Chevalier       Blaise 

Marie.  43-46,  53-54-  57.  58. 

60-62 
Aziyadi,  Pierre  Loti,  202,  216 

Baif,  354 

Bal,  Vigny's,  Le,  7 

Ballades  Francaises,  Paul  Fort, 

335 
Balthasar,  A.  France,  188 
Balzac,  Honor6  de,  122,  241 
Balzac  (Jean  Louis  Guez) ,  66, 67 
Banville,  Theodore  de,  369 
Barante,  M.  de,  47 
Barbin,  Paris  Publisher,  67 
Barnabi,  Fabre's,  157 
Barr^s,  M.  Maurice,  254,  265, 

287-295 
Batilliat,  M.  Marcel,  306 
Baudelaire,  C,   113,  317,  329, 

334,  338 
Bazin,  M.  Rene,  261-283 
Beauvois,  M.,  71,  72,  82-84 
B6darieux       (Birthplace       of 

Fabre),   152,   153,   156,   168, 

174 
Beerbohm,  Mr.  Max,  96 
Behn,  Mrs.  Aphra,  362 

375 


3/6 


Index 


Beja,  Canoness  of,  67,  68,  73, 

83,  85 
Bennett,  James  Gordon,  248 
Benserade,  358 
Bercail,  Fabre,  F.,  Le,  157 
Bernard,  Claude,  147 
Bernhardt,     Madame     Sarah, 

251 
Berry,  Mme.   la  Duchesse  de, 

44 
Boccaccio,  350,  352 
Boileau,  80,  358.  362,  363,  364, 

366,  368 
Boissier,  Gaston,  66 
Boissonade,  68 
Bolingbroke,  Lady,  41,  45 

■ ,  Lord,  40,  43,  46,  55 

Bonheur    dans    le    Crime,    Le, 

d'Aurevilly's,  94,  loi, 
Bon  Plaisir,  Le,  H.  de  Regnier's, 

308 
Boufflers,  Stanislaus,  Chevalier 

de,  128 
Bouillon,  Duchesse  de,  56 
Boule  de  Suif,   Guy  de  Mau- 
passant's, 138 
Bourges,  M.  ^^emir,  267 
Bourget,  M.  Paul,  91,  109,  235- 

258,  294 
Boumonville,    Mme.    la    Prin- 

cesse  de,  49 
Boursault,  P6re,  62 
Bouton,    Noel,    Count    of    St. 

L6ger-sur-Dheune,    69.     See 

Chamilly. 
Brummell,  Du  Dandyistne  et  de 

Georges,  d'Aurevilly,  91,  96 
Bruneti^re,  263 
Buffon,  97,  366 
Bunbury,    Miss    Lydia,    later 

Comtesse  de  Vigny,  13 
Byron,  Lord,  7,  11,  13,  14,  29, 

94.  96,  326,  367 

Calandrini,  Madame,  46-49, 

53.  55.  58.  62 
Calderon  de  la  Barca,  Pedro, 

361 
Calprendde,  Gautier  la,  359 


Canterbury  Tales,  Chaucer,  351 
Cantilines,  Les,  Moreas,  182 
Capitaine    Burle,    Le,    Zola's, 

142 
Carnet  de   Danse,    Le,    Zola's, 

128 
C6ard,  M.  Henri,  138 
Celle  qui  m'aime,  Zola's,   131, 

132 
Chamilly,   Marquis  of,   68-71, 

80-83 
Chanson  de  Roland,  8,  347 
Charcot,  the  physician,  106 
Charist  d'Or,   Le,   A.   Samain, 

331 
Chateaubriand,  F.  de,  6,  90-92, 

366 
Chats,  Les  Paradis  des,  Zola's, 

135 
Chatterton,  Thomas,  19-23 
Chatterton,  Vigny 's,  20,  21 
Chaucer,   Geoffrey,    344,    348- 

352.  358 
Ch6nier,  Andre,  4,  6,  19,  307, 

365 
Chesterfield,  Lord.  210 
Chewier,  Le,  Fabre,  157,  171- 

174 
Christianisme,  Ginie  du,  Cha- 
teaubriand, 6 
Cid,  Comeille's,  360 
Cinq-Mars,  Vigny's,  13 
Cinquante       Balades,        John 

Gower's,  351 
Citd  des  Eaux,  La,  M.   H.  de 

Regnier's,  303,  305 
Claretie,  Jules,  113,  151 
CUlie,    Mdlle.     de    Scud6ry's, 

66 
Coignard,      Jirdme,      Anatole 

France,  190 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  8,  343,  366 
Collingwood,  Lord,  25 
Complications       Sentimentales, 

Bourget's,  244-246 
Confession     d'un     Enfant    du 

Siecle,  de  Musset's,  283 
Contes  d.  Ninon,   Zola's,    128, 

132 


Index 


377 


Contes  Choisis,  Daudet's,  no, 

122 

Contes  du  Lundi.DdiXxdet' s,  no 
Cooper's  Hill,   Sir  John  Den- 
ham's,  357 
Coppee,  Fran90is,  330 
Cor,  Vigny's  Le,  8 
Corneille,  Pierre,  359,  363 

,  Thomas,  361 

Cotton.  Charles,  358 
Courbezon,  Les,  Fabre's,  156 
Cowley,  Abraham,  355-357 
Crabbe,  George,  326,  366 
Crebillon,  Claude,  128 
Crime  d'A  mour.  Bourget's,  Un, 

Criticism,    Pope  s    Essay    on, 

364 
Croquis    de    France,    Bazin  s, 

282 
Croquis  d'Orient,  Bazin's,  282 
Crowne,  John,  361 
Culte  du  Moi,  M.  Barr^s,  293 

Dame  Romaine,  Vigny's  La.  7 
Dandy    d'avant    les    Dandys, 

d'Aurevilly's  Vn,  96 
Dandyisme  et  de  Georges  Brum- 

mell,  d'Aurevilly's  Du,    91, 

96 
Daniel,  Samuel,  354 
Dante,  4.  129,  352 
Daudet,  Alphonse,  105-123 
,  Ernest.    Mon    Frire    et 

Moi,  108 
Davcnant,    Sir   William,    355, 

356 
Dibdcles,  Les,  Verhaeren's.  325 
Defiand,  Madame  du,   43,  44. 

56,  61 
Delavigne,  Casimir,  16,  90 
Delia,  Daniel's,   354;   Maurice 

Serve's,  354 
DeUUe,  Abb6,  365.  366 
Deluge,  Vigny's  Le,  9-1 1 
Denham,  Sir  John.  355.  357, 

360 
De    Quincey.    Thomas,     288, 

291 


Diracinis,    M.     Barris'      Les, 

254.  255.  265 
Dernier  Jours  de   Pikin,   Les, 

Loti's,  228-232 
Deschamps,  Emile,  8 

.  Eustace,  350,  351,  369 

Ddsert,  Le,  Pierre  Loti's,  202- 

207,  213 
Desportes,  Philippe,  354 
Dessous    des     Cartes,     d'Aure- 
villy's Le,  100,  loi 
Destinies,  Vigny's  Les,  27-28 
Destouches,  N..  36,  55 
De  Tocqueville,  A.,^  247,  249 
De     Toute    son    Ame,     Ren6 

Bazin's,  274-276 
D£vouie,  La,  Hennique,  138 
Diaboliques,    Les,    d'Aurevilly, 

lOI 

Dickens.  Charles.  98.  116,  241 

Disraeli.  B..  94 

Divagations,     Stephane     Mal- 

larm6's.  319 
Don  Juan,  Le  Plus  Bel  Amour 

de.  d'Aurevilly's.  95.  loi 
Donne.  John,  322 
Dorval.  Marie.   16-18.  20.  26, 

27 
Double  Conversion,  La,  Daudet, 

no 
Double  Maitresse.  La.  M.  H.  de 

Regnier,  308 
Dryden,  John,  180,  361,  362 
Du  Bartas,  354 
Du  Bellay,  Joachim,  353 
Dubreuil,  I'Abbe,  154 
Duchesse  Bleue,  La,  Bourget's 

239-243.  264 

iloa,  Vigny's,  9,  11-12,  18 
Embarrassments,     Mr.     Henry 

James's.  239 
Empedocles,  Matthew  Arnold's, 

307 
Endymion,  Keats',  306 
EngUsh  Poetry,  the  influence  of 

France  upon,  341-37° 
Ennemi  des  Lois,  L',  M.  Bands', 

293 


3/8 


Index 


Ensorcelie,  L',  d'Aurevilly's,  93 
Epistle  to  Dr.  Arbuthnot,  Pope's, 

364 
Espinasse,  Mademoiselle  de  1', 

36.  37.  46 
Essay    on    Criticism,    Pope's, 

364 
itape,  L',  Bourget.  253-258 
tltourdi,  L',  Moliere's,  361 
ivangeliste,  L',  Daudet's,  106, 

114 

Fabre,  L'Abbe  Fulcran,  153 

,  Ferdinand,  151-175 

Faerie  Queen,  Spenser's,  4 
Fantome    d'Orient,    P.    Loti's, 

202,  223 
Fde  Amoureuse,  La,  Zola's,  128 
Femmes         d  Artistes,        Les, 

Daudet's,    122 
Ferriol,      Baron      d'Argental, 

Charles,  37,  38,  40 
,  Madame  de',  37,  38,  42- 

46.  49.  58,  59.  61 
Feuillet,  Octave,  145,  263 
Figures  et  Chases  qui  passaient, 

Pierre  Loti,  217,  222 
Fitzjames,  Duchess  of,  54 
Fitzmaurice- Kelly,      Professor 

James,  350 
Flamandes,   Les,    6mile     Ver- 

haeren's.  325 
Flancs     du     Vase,     Aux,     M. 

Albert  Samain's,  330 
Flaubert,  G.,  113,  122,  138,264 
Fletcher,  John,  359 
Fleurs  d'Exil,  Loti's,  229 
Fleurs  du   Mai,   Baudelaire's, 

329 
Fleury,  Cardinal  de,  52 
Forces      Tumultuenses ,       Les, 

Iimile  Verhaeren's,  326 
Ford,  John,  359 
Forgeron,  Zola's  Le,  135 
Fort,  M.  Paul,  334-338 
France,  M.  Anatole,  169,  187- 

197,  263 
Friendship's  Garland,  Matthew 

Arnold's,  194,  264 


Froissart,  350 

Fromont  Jeune  et  Risler  Ain6, 
Daudet's,  108,  114,  115,  116 

Galilie,  P.  Loti's  La,  213-216, 
223,  229 

Gamier,  Robert,  354 

Gautier,  Theophile,  128,  369 

Gay,  Delphine,  8,  13 

Ghiie  du  Christianisme ,  Cha- 
teaubriand's, 6 

Gesvres,  Due  de,  38,  39 

Ghil,  M.  Ren6,  300 

Gilbert,  poet,  19 

Goethe,  91,  99 

Goncourt,  Edmond  de,  46,  113, 
133.  264 

,  Jules  de,  133 

Gower,  John,  351 

Grandeur  et  Servitude  Mili- 
taires,  Vigny's,  7,  23-25 

Granson,  Oton  de,  350,  352 

Gray,  Thomas,  56,  344,  365 

Grignan,  Madame  de,  48,  66 

Guerin,  Maurice  de,  90,  91 

Guerres,  Zola's  Trois,  139 

Guilleragues,  Pierre  Girardin 
de,  80 

Gulliver's  Travels,  Swift's,  55 

Hachette,  M.,  129,  130 
Haggard,    Sir    Henry    Rider, 

207 
Hal6vy,  Ludovic,  151,  268 
Hardy,  Mr.  Thomas,  152,  171, 

174.  263 
Harland,  Henry,  179,  181 
Hennique,  Leon,  138 
Heredia,  M.  de,  292,  302,  304, 

305.  333 
Hermite,  Tristan  1',  359 
Hirodiade,  Mallarme's,  313 
Hervieu,  M.  Paul,  264 
Histoire  Comique,  M.  Anatole 

France's,  193-197 
Histoire  d'une  Grecque  Moderne, 

Prevost's,  55 
Histoire      sans      Nom,      Une, 

d'Aurevilly's,  92,  94,  100 


Index 


379 


Homme d' Affaires,  Un,M.  Bour- 

get's,  264 
Homme  Libre,  Un,  M.  Barrfes', 

288,  291 
Hommes,    Les    (Euvres    et    les, 

d'Aurevilly's,  99 
Horaces,  Les,  360 
Howell,  James,  65-66 
Hugo,  Victor,  3,  7-9,   11,   16, 

90,  181,  326.  338,  366.  368. 

369 
Humble     Amour,      M.      Ren6 

Bazin's,  277 
Huysmans,    Jons   Karel,    138, 

265 

Jdylle  Tragique,  Une,  Bourget's, 

245 
Immortel,  L',  Daudet's,  115 
Isez,  the  surgeon,  51,  52 
Italie,  Bourget's  Sensations  d', 

247 

Jack,  Daudet's,  109,  114 
James,    Mr.    Henry,    44,    201, 

239,  242 
Jardin  de  Birinice,  M.  Barrfes' 

Le,  289,  292 
Jardin  d  Epicure,  Le,  M.  Ana- 

tole  France's,  188,  195 
Jardin  de  I' Infante,  Au,  Albert 

Samain's,  330,  331 
Jean  Gourdon,  Zola's  Les  Quatre 

Journies  de,  135,  144 
Jephti,  La  Fille  de,  Vigny's,  7 
Jerdme  Coignard,  M.,  M.  Ana- 

tole  France's,  188 
Jerusalem,  Pierre  Loti's,  208- 

213,  220,  228,  229 
Jeux  Rustiques  et  Divins,  Les, 

M.  H.  de  R6gnier's,  299-301, 

305 
Jonson,  Ben,  322 
Jusserand,  M.,  71 

Kahn,  M.  Gustave,  181 
Karr,  Alphonse,  290 
Keats,  John,  8,  106,  302,  306, 
308,  344,  348,  367,  368 


Kilmorey,  Earl  of,  27 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  116,  175 
Kyd,  Thomas,  354 

Lacordaire,  159 

La  Fontaine,  Jean  de,  Adonis, 

358 
Lamartine,    Alphonse    de,    3, 

329,  366,  367 
Lammenais,  F.,  13,  159 
Langland,  William,  348 
Le  Terre,  Zola's,  127 
Leblond,  C616nie,  45,  58,  59 
Lecouvreur,  Adrienne,  56 
Lee,  Sir  Sidney,  354 
Legend      of      Good      Women, 

Chaucer's,  348, 
Lemaltre,  M.  Jules,  151,  283 
Leopardi,  Giacomo,  4 
L'Estrange,    Sir    Roger,    Five^ 

Love  Letters  from  a  Nun  to' 

a  Cavalier,  84 
Letters  from  a  Nun  to  a  Cavalier, 

65-85 
Letters,  Mademoiselle  Aiss6's,40 
Lettres  de  mon  Af  ou/tn,  Daudet'  s, 

no.  III,  120 
Lettres  Portugaises,  65-85 
Lisle,  Leconte  de,  292,  295 
Lodge,  Thomas,  354 
Lorres,  Guillaume  de,  347,  348, 

350 
Loti,  Pierre,  134,  151,  201-232 
Lucifer,  Fabre's,  157,  162,  165 
Lutrin,  Le,  Boileau's,  363 
Lys  Rouge,  Le,  M.  A.  France's, 

189.  195 

Machault,  Guillaume  de,  350, 

351.  352.  369 
Madame  Corentine,  M.  Bazin's, 

276 
Ma  Douleur,  Daudet's,  105 
Maeterlinck,  324,  325 
Maintenon,  Madame  de,  80 
Malherbe,  F.,  356,  357 
Mallarm6,  St6phane,  179,  300. 

313-323 
,  and  Symbolism,  373,  374 


38o 


Index 


Mannequin  d'Osier,  Le,  M.  A. 

France's,  i6g,  i88,  189,  191 
Manon  Lescaut,  55,  115 
Manage  de  Loti,  Le,  P.  Loti's, 

201 
Mariana  Alcaforada,  the  Portu- 
guese Nun,  65-85 
Marivaux,  Pierre,  235 
Marot,  Clement,  352,  353 
Ma  Tante  Giron,   M.    Bazin's, 

268,  269 
Matelot,  P.  Loti's,  202,  223 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  109,  122, 

138,  145.  239,  264 
Ma  Vocation,  Fabre's,  153 
Midailles  dArgile,  M,    H,   de 

Regnier's,  305 
Meditations  Poitiques,  Lamar- 

tine's,  367 
Mimoires     d'un     Homme     de 

Quality     retird     du     Monde, 

Prevost  d'Exiles',  55 
Meung,    Jean    de,    347,    348, 

350 
Milton,   John,  4,   11,   13,   128, 

344.  357 
Mirour  de   I'Omme,    Eustache 

Deschamps,  351 
Moines,  Les,  M.  Emile  Verhae- 

ren's,  325 
Moise,  Vigny's,  9 
Moliere,  55,  62,  358,  360-362 
Man  Frere  Yves,  P.  Loti's,  223 
Monsieur      de      Cantors,      O. 

Feuillet's,  145,  263 
Monsieur  Jean,  Fabre's,  170 
Montagne,  M.  Paul  Fort's,  337 
Montaigne,  172,  190 
Montesquieu,  36 
Moore,  Thomas,  11,  12,  14 
Moreas,  Jean,  180,  i8i,  184 
Moreau,  Hegesippe,  22 
Motteville,        Madame        de, 

Mimoires,  77 
Moulin,  Zola's    L'Attaque  du, 

139 
Muse  Franfaise,  La,  11 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  Confession 

d'un  Enfant  du  Siicle,  283 


Nabab,  Le,  Daudet's,  114,  121 
Nana,  Zola's,  127 
Nanthia,  Vicomtesse  de,  46 
Nichina,  La,  Hugues  Rebell's, 

265 
Ninon,    Nouveaux     Contes    ct, 

Zola's,  133-135 
Nodier,  C,  7,  13 
Noellet,  Les,  M.  Bazin's,  277 
Norris,  Mr.  W.  E.,  271 
Notre    Coeur,    Guy    de    Mau- 
passant's, 239 
Nouveaux      Lundis,       Sainte- 

Beuve's,  5 
Numa    Roumestan,    Daudet's, 

114,  115,  121,  122 
Nun's      Love      Letters,      see 

Portuguese       Letters  :       see 

Mariana  Alcaforada 

Oncle   Cilestin,  Mon,   Fabre's, 

153.  157.  168 
Orinda,  The  Matchless,  360 
Orleans,  Duke  of,  41 
Orme  du  Mail,  L' ,  M.  Anatole 

France's,  189-191,  264 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  334 
Othello,  Shakespeare,  261,  354 
Otway,  Thomas,  362,  363 
Outre-Mer,  M.  Paul  Bourget's. 

247-253 

Pack,  Major  Richardson,  84 
Paleologue,  M.,  13,  26, 
Parab^re,  Madame  de,  42,  46, 

49.  54.  <5o.  61 
Paris  :  Elevation,  Vigny's,  23 
Paris,  Gaston,  263 
Paris    Sentimental,    M.     Paul 

Fort's,  337 
Parnasse  Coniemporain,  314 
Parnassians,  292,  302,  304,  333, 

369 
Pascal,  17 

Pater,  Walter,  173,  174 
Pattison,  Mark,  72 
Pecheur   d'Islande,    P.    Loti's, 

223,  277 
Pikin,  Pierre  Loti's,  228-232 


Ind 


ex 


38. 


Pellissier,  operatic  star,  50 
Penruddock,  Mrs.,  67 
Perraud,  Cardinal,  151 
Petit  Chose,  Le.  Daudet's,  io8. 

116,  117 
Petrarch,  350,  352 
Philosophe    Mari6,    Le,    Des- 

touche's,  55 
Pichot,  M.  Amedee,  156 
Piedagnal,  M.,  47 
Plato's  Timaus,  255 
PUiade,  the,  353,  354 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  314,  334 
Poimes  A  nciens  et  Romanesques, 

M.  de  R6gnier's,  300,  301 
Poimes  Antiques,  Judaiques,  et 

Modemes,  Vigny's,  7 
Polyphime,  A.  Samain's,  331 
Pont-de-Veyle,  Marquis  de,  38, 

50.  56.  57 
Pontmartin,  M.  de,  89 
Pope,  Alexander,  4,  362-364 
Portuguese  Letters,  the,  65-85 
Pricieuses       Ridicules,       Les, 

Molifere's,  361 
Pritre  Marii,  Le,  d'Aurevilly's, 

92,  93 
Pr6vost,  M.  Marcel,  264 
Provost  d'Exiles,  L'Abb6.  55 
Propos  d'Exil,  P.  Loti's,  222 
Prose    pour    les    Esseintes,    S. 

Mallarme's,  321 
Puits  de  Sainte  Claire,  Le,  M.  A. 

France's,  188 

QuELEN,  Archbishop  de,  159 
Quinault,  361 

Racan, 357 

Racine,   Jean,   338.   344,  346, 

358.  360.  361,  362,  363 
Rambosson,  M.  Yvanhoe,  300 
Ramuntcho,  Pierre  Loti's,  222, 

223 
Rape  of  the  Lock,  Pope's,  364 
Regnier,   M.    Henri    de,   299- 

310 
Renan,  Ernest,  151,  295 
Reni,  Chateaubriand's,  366 


Retraite,  La,  Racan's,  357 
Richardson,  Samuel,  46,  235 
Rideau  Cramoisi,   Le,  d'Aure- 
villy's, 95,  100 
Rieu,  Mademoiselle,  44,  45 
Rod,  itdouard,  266 
Rots  en  Exit,  Les,  Daudet,  114 
Rollinat,  Maurice,  329 
Roman  de  la  Rose,  Lorris's,  347, 

348.  349 
Roman  de  Louis  XI,  M.  Paul 

Fort's,  336 
Roman    d'un    Enfant,    Le,    P. 

Loti's,  220 
Roman  d'un  Spahi,  Loti's,  203, 

223 
Roman  Experimental,  Le,  Zola's, 

262 
Ronsard,  307,  354 
Rose  et  Ninette,  Daudet's,  115 
Rosny  {Les  Frferes),  266 
Rdtisserie  de  la  Reine  Pidauque, 

La,  M.  Anatole  France's,  i88, 

196 
Rotrou,  359 
Rougon-Macquart     series     of 

Zola,  127,  132,  133-135.  189, 

262 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  82,  365 
Route  d'^meraude.  La,  Eugfene 

Demolder's,  265 
Ruffec,  Due  de,  49 
Ruskin,  John,  35,  207 
Rutter,  Joseph,  359 

Saint-Amant,  357 
Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A.,  5,  6.  37, 

99.  156,  157     ,       „   .        ^ 
Sainte    Claire,    Le    Putts    de, 

M.  Anatole  France's,  188 
Sainte-Gelais,  Malin  de.  353 
Saint-Simon,  Due  de,  68,  80, 

81 
Saint- Victor,  Paul  de,  loi 
Samain.  Albert,  329-334 
Sand,  George,  18,  130,  152,  157, 

262 
Sandeau,  Jules,  157 
Santillana,  350 


382 


Index 


Sapho,    Daudet's,     106,     115, 

117 
Sarcelle  Bleue,  La,  Bazin  s,  267, 

271-273 
Scarron,  Paul,  107,  358 
Schoraberg,  Count  of,  70 
Schwob,  Marcel,  350 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  13,  14,  366 
Scudery,  Mademoiselle  de,  66, 

359 
Seche,  M.  Leon,  6,  13 
Segrais's  ^glogties,  358 
Sensations    d'ltalie,   M.    Bour- 

get's,  247 
Serao,    Matilde,    //    paese    di 

Cuccagna,  241,  242 
Serves   Ckandes,    Les,   Maeter- 
linck's, 325 
Sevigne,  Madame  de,   36,   48, 

66,  77 
Shakespeare,  15,  345,  348,  354, 

363 
Shelley.  P.  B.,  4,  367,  368 
Sir  Martin  Mar-all,  Dryden's, 

361 
Sleep  and  Poetry,  Keats',  367 
Soirs,  Les,  M.  E.  Verhaeren's, 

325 
Soumet,  A.,  13 
Sous   rCEil   des   Barbares,    M. 

Barr^s',  293 
Spectator,  The,  84 
Spenser,  Edmund,  353 
Stanley,  Dean,  204,  205 
Stello,  Vigny's,  18-20 
Sterne,  Laurence,  294 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  116, 

140,  174,  294 
Suckling,  Sir  John,  355 
Surrey,   Henry  Howard,   Earl 

of.  352.  353 
Swift,  Dean,  191,  194 
Swinburne,  Algernon,  344,  369 
Symons,  Mr.  Arthur,  179 

Tache  d'Encre,  Une,  Ren6 
Bazin's,  268,  269,  271,  287 

Taine,  H.,  151,  152,  159,  174, 
255.  256,  287 


Tartarin  of  Tarascon,  Daudet's, 

118,  119 
Tencin,  Madame  de,  46,  54,  61 
Tennyson,  194,  302,  348,  368 
Terminations,       Mr.       Henry 

James's,  242 
Terre   d'Espagne,   M.   Bazin's, 

281 
Terre     qui     Meurt,     La,     M. 

Bazin  s,  277-280,  282 
Thais,  M.  A.  France's,  188 
ThSrese  Raquin,  Zola's,  133 
Thyard,  Pontus  de,  354 
Tissot,  M.  Ernest,  99 
Tocqueville,  A.  de,  247,  249 
Tolstoi,  25,  136,  140,  141,  187, 

193.  241 
TouissaintGalabru,  Fabre's,  171 
Trente  Ans  de  Paris,  Daudet's, 

107 
Trebutien,  M.,  91 
Trois     Ames     d' Artistes.     See 

Duchesse  Bleue,  242 
Trollope,  Anthony,  116,  165 

Ulbach,  Louis,  133 

Vacances    de    Pdques,     Pierre 

Loti's,  220 
Vacances   d'un   Jeune   Homme 

Sage,   M.    H.    de  Regnier's, 

308-310 
Vaines   Tendresses,  Les,  Sully 

Prudhomme's,  304 
Vathek,  Beckford,  with  preface 

by  Mallarme,  315 
Verhaeren,  M.  Emile,  324-328 
Verlaine,  Paul,  A  first  sight  of, 

179-184,  323 
Versailles-aux-Fantdmes,        M. 

Batilliat's,  306 
Vers  et    Prose,  S.  Mallaxme's, 

.313.  316 
Viau,  Theophile  de,  357 
Vie  Litteraire,  La,  M,  Anatole 

France's,  188 
Vielle  Maitresse,  Une,  d'Aure- 

villy's,  94 
Vieux,  Les,  Daudet's,  iii,  112 


Index 


383 


Vigny,  Alfred  de,  3-31,  90,  307, 

329,  366,  367 
Villes    Tentaculaires,    Les,    M. 

Verhaeren's,  327 
Villette,  Mademoiselle  de,  45 

,  Marquise  de,  41 

Vogue,  Melchior  de,  238 
Voiture,  Vincent,  66,  67,  358 
Voleurs   et  I'Ane,   Les,   Zola's, 

130 
Voltaire,  36,  44,  47,  50,  56,  60, 

346,  365 
Voyage  de  Sparte.Le,  M.  Barrte', 

292,  294 


Voyageuses.M.  Paul  Bourget's, 
235-239.  244-253 

Waller,  Edmund,  355,  356 
Whitman,  Walt,  335,  338 
Wood's  Town,  Daudefs,  117 
Wordsworth,   William,    4,    19, 

28,  334,  366 
Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  352,  353 

Yeats,  Mr.  W.  B.,  237,  333,  335 

Zola,    Emile,    113,    127-147, 
187,  241 


Richard  Clay  &  Sons,  Limited, 
brunswick  strekt,  stamford  strket, 
and  bungay,  suffolk. 


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